Project P.I.T.T Review (PC)

Behind Project P.I.T.T’s brutalist vision and bath toy-filled tub of low-poly conveyor belts is an annoyingly unforgiving automation sim that knows exactly how to push your buttons, as well as how to make you feel as if you’ve just wasted an entire afternoon. Although it initially presents itself as a quirky rubber duck-filled experience (and not to mention an ode to the golden age of PSX), it doesn’t take all that long for it to start belittling you and putting you on a reverse trajectory to the middle of nowhere. It tells you that, in order make good on your promise, you must feed “The Maw”—a gaping pit that, for some reason, only consumes the ducks that you yourself cough up with a small machine in a dull and somewhat barren factory.

It should have been a routine job—to churn out ducks with a crank, and to feed them into an ominous void in a seemingly oppressive warehouse. And to be honest, for the first several minutes, it did feel like a routine operation. The ducks would merrily funnel their way into The Maw, and the crank would give me the freedom to produce more of ducks to help quell an insatiable hunger. But then, The Maw wanted more — because of course it did. The ducks wouldn’t cut it, and I needed to start getting creative if I wanted to build heftier combos. The pit doubled in size, and as a result left me with a simple task: to build a makeshift conveyor belt that could carry additional cargo, and to automate the operation so that I could tend to more pressing matters elsewhere, like the anomalies that loomed in the shadows of the factory.

As I said, it should have been a well-oiled machine that I was building. For each piece of the puzzle that I was connecting to the warehouse pipeline, The Maw’s hunger seemed to decrease and leave me with a little more breathing room to function more efficiently. But then, it happened: the collapse that left me with a hole in my stomach, a frog in my throat, and a headful of grey hairs for me to tear from my scalp. As if to kick me when I was already down, all of what I built was destroyed in a heartbeat, leaving me to gaze upon the wreckage as an hour-long graft left me without even a speck of nectar to sample. The world fell to ruin, and I was no longer able to feed The Maw, only pick up the fragments of a broken machine and to start over from scratch. But of course, I wasn’t eager to bury my head in the sand for a second time. I wanted to hand in my letter of resignation and cash out before it happened all over again.

Before a supernatural earthquake destroyed most of what I had spent hours building, I had something of an unkept purpose that was able to propel me through the darkness. With a trove of objects to manufacture, a huge collection of creative tools to help me fashion oddly-shaped belts and automative systems, and a clear objective to keep me busy, I had an endgame in mind. For a short while, I wanted to actively pursue that final checkpoint, too. The world was full of old gadgets for me to pluck out, and the atmosphere was unsettling enough to keep me on the edge of my seat as I meandered through the wreckage and constructed various conveyor belts. The process, too, was simple enough that I didn’t need to brush up on the details. I knew exactly what I was doing, and I wanted to fulfill my responsibilities as a corporate punchbag.

When all hell wasn’t breaking loose on the factory floor, Project P.I.T.T was, in all honesty, a lot of fun to work through. As disturbing and as unforgiving as it often seemed, it always felt as if there were more surprises there for me to unearth from the rubble of my former contraptions. If, say, the world wasn’t in ruin and forever falling apart, then it was coughing up new challenges for me to take a stab at. If I didn’t have a new automation machine to work with, then I had anomalies that I would need to tend to, thousands of ducks that would need sweeping, and a dismal sense that something was often amiss.

While Project P.I.T.T can feel like an overwhelming disappointment even during the best of times, it does have some good bones to it. Granted, its unnatural habit of pulverizing your work is a pain in the neck, as are the few technical flaws that it sadly holds onto. That being said, it is a chaotically entertaining affair that leans into the brutalist PSX style incredibly well. With some dainty details and a well-peppered dash of low-poly weirdness, it makes for a unique game that can get the cogs in your head turning. That is, of course, until it knocks you on the head and destroys all that you care about. But that’s all part of the quest. It’s just a shame that it isn’t, you know, fun.

As there isn’t much of a pint to Project P.I.T.T, it can be rather difficult to stick it out until the bitter end. Given that your purpose is to feed The Maw and build contraptions that can help you out with the workload, it is surprisingly easy to lose sight of the perks and fall into the trap of repeating the same mistakes over and over again. At times, it’s something that you can gloss over. But, annoyingly, it’s also a thorn in the side that, like a warehouse job, in general, has its fair share of flaws. Look beyond the lulls of the job, however, and you might just enjoy spoon feeding rubber ducks into the abyss.

Verdict

Project P.I.T.T fools you into following a rubber-laced primrose path with the intent to satisfy an insatiable hunger that, frustratingly, cannot be fulfilled no matter how many bath toys you shove down its throat or how many times you rebuild the same automotive system. The fact is, while it does reward you for your efforts, it does like to deflate your chances just as soon as you begin to find your rhythm. And that’s a tedious thing in this case, as the process of feeding The Maw can be surprisingly enjoyable. But it’s the aftermath, sadly, that dampens the fun here. Because let’s face it, nobody likes to watch their creations explode for the sake of it. Project P.I.T.T, however, bathes in your ever-growing frustration, and it doesn’t hide it, either.

With all of the above said, Project P.I.T.T is a good game that blends automation with supernatural PSX-inspired gameplay surprisingly well. It’s a nightmare to sit through I’ll admit, but it’s also worth taking the time to experience, if only for the brief spells of joy that you receive from the graft. Just don’t expect The Maw to be an easy dinner guest.