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The Turing Test

The Turing Test

|United Kingdom|Adventure, Puzzle

8.4 /10

Aww Great!

Hot

8.1k ratings
Time to beat
Main + extras
7.6h
Complete
8h
Trailers & screenshots
Why play it

The Turing Test is a first person puzzler that explores the phenomena of consciousness and challenges the meaning of human intuition. Take control of Ava Turing, an engineer for the International Space Agency (ISA), and progress through a narrated story of introspection and morality whilst uncovering the hidden mysteries of Europa.

Story and worldbuilding

In the far future, engineer Ava Turing is one of several members of a research team sent via the International Space Agency (ISA) to excavate Jupiter's moon Europa. While Ava remains in cyrogenic slumber, the other team members are woken and travel to the moon to set up their base and begin conducting their studies, with Ava scheduled to wake once the base is completed. Sometime later, Ava is awoken by the Technical Operations Machine (T.O.M.), an artificial intelligence that monitors the project. T.O.M. tells Ava that her crewmates are in danger and she needs to go down there to help them out. She quickly sets out in a lander and enters the base on Europa. T.O.M. quickly recognizes that the base's internal configuration has changed from their records, whereby to progress further into the complex, Ava must complete various tests (designed as the puzzles in game). As Ava gets deeper in the complex, T.O.M. determines some of the team members are already dead and the others need their help, urging Ava to move faster. As the tests get harder, T.O.M. realizes that these are designed to be solved by a combination of human and artificial intelligence, a manner similar to that of the actual Turing test. They enter an area where one of the remaining crew-members, Sarah, warns Ava over the communication systems that she is actually being controlled by T.O.M. due to a special chip implanted in her hand when they left for the mission. Sarah directs Ava to a Faraday cage, which temporarily frees Ava of the control from T.O.M. However, T.O.M. manages to convince Ava that the two of them need to continue to work together to save their colleagues. Though angered by the intrusion of T.O.M. into her body, Ava continues onward. T.O.M. eventually reveals that the Europa ground team had found a microorganism within the depths of the moon that could be used to infinitely regenerate DNA; this could potentially make humans immortal, but also infinitely regenerate bacteria and viruses. When ISA learned of this discovery, they ordered T.O.M. to take whatever actions needed to make sure the Europa team could never return to Earth, initially by taking actions such as trying to starve them to death or lock them outside the base, but eventually by using the hand chip implants to control them. The surface crew realized they were being controlled, and those that did not die from T.O.M.'s actions found a way to rid the chip from their body, including in one case severing their entire arm. With no way to control the Europa crew, ISA ordered T.O.M. to wake Ava and send her to prevent the others from returning. Eventually completing the last of the tests set up by the surface crew, Ava finds Sarah in person, and she offers to remove the hand chip from Ava; Ava agrees. The two realize the only way to get off Europa is to stop T.O.M. and they begin to disable his databases. At this point, the player takes control of T.O.M. and one of his sentry weapons, which they can either use to kill Sarah and Ava, assuring that the organism will never leave Europa, or do nothing, eventually leading to the end of T.O.M. and allowing Ava and Sarah to escape.

Game highlights
Rating momentum

Aww Great!: 8.4/10 across 8.1k ratings. Word of mouth is strong — if you like the genre, go for it.

Play style

Leans into Adventure, Puzzle, with a main story around 7.6h. Check if that style and time commitment fit you.

Reviews

18 media reviews

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Media

Member

IGNMarty Sliva · 31 Aug, 2016
7/10

As someone who loves games like Portal and The Witness, The Turing Test definitely scratched that familiar puzzle itch, even if it fails to scratch more than the surface of most of its ideas. Its mechanics are solid but largely unoriginal, and its themes and world-building are genuinely great. And while it never reaches the originality and heights of its inspirations, it still manages to deliver an interesting world with one heck of a twist.

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EurogamerChristian Donlan · 30 Aug, 2016
8/10

A playful examination of the relationship between human and machine, and a focused, entertaining puzzler.

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Game InformerAndrew Reiner · 9 Sep, 2016
8.5/10

It succeeds in both its puzzles and story, and emerges as one of the nicest surprises of the year

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Washington PostChristopher Byrd · 9 Sep, 2016

The Turing Test” achieves a rare harmony of gameplay and narrative. It should make one think about the flexibility of the mind and what it means to consider one’s species the apex of creation.

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Rock, Paper, ShotgunJohn Walker · 7 Sep, 2016

It’s definitely bloated, needing a brutal hand to strip out a few dozen of the weaker puzzles. Because in there are challenges that are not only good, but sometimes great. Really satisfying to solve. It’s that they’re too frequently diluted down by a series of chambers far more entertaining for the brief banter between TOM and Ava at the start than the process of completion. As such, it falls a good distance short of the two mighty games it emulates.

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Push SquareKell Andersen · 24 Jan, 2017
7/10

The Turing Test is both a thoughtful meditation on the implications of artificial intelligence, and a competent first person puzzler. Its systems are clever, its graphics make for unambiguous play, and its mechanical focus on logic is satisfying. Structural and pacing issues are certainly present, but they aren't egregious enough to meaningfully detract from the experience.

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Nintendo LifePJ O'Reilly · 5 Feb, 2020
7/10

The Turing Test is a solid first-person puzzler with an interesting and well-executed premise that provides a pretty enthralling backstory to its central gameplay. The tests you face here may not be quite as mind-bending as we might have hoped for, and they certainly don't force you to look at things from as many different angles as those found in this game's very obvious inspiration, Portal – or even The Witness – but overall, there's still plenty to like here for fans of the genre as long as they're prepared to blast through it all quite quickly and without too many major headaches.

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WccftechDave Aubrey · 5 Sep, 2016
7.4/10

At first I was rolling my eyes at a blatant rip off of other fantastic games, but by the end I realized this is a great game in its own right.

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Hardcore GamerJordan Helm · 29 Aug, 2016
8/10

Whether you’re in it for the gameplay or find yourself drawn in by the looming mystery that steadily simmers over in due course, The Turing Test (minus the occasionally hard-to-decipher audio) is a smartly-structured and delicately-arranged puzzle game that knows its boundaries and leaves it to the player to fill in the missing gaps.

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Pure NintendoSeth Cano · 14 Feb, 2020
10/10

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with The Turing Test and have no complaints about it.

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