The Initiate 2: The First Interviews

The Initiate 2: The First Interviews is a first-person puzzle adventure developed and published by Deceptive Games Ltd. Serving as a sequel to the original The Initiate, the game continues the series’ focus on complex puzzle solving, environmental exploration, and psychological mystery. Rather than emphasizing action or combat, the experience centers entirely on logic, investigation, and unraveling a carefully constructed scenario in which several individuals must confront a series of intellectual challenges in order to survive. With its escape-room style mechanics and narrative built around secrecy and moral judgment, the game aims to immerse players in a tense situation where observation and reasoning become the most valuable tools. The story begins with three strangers awakening in isolated cells within what appears to be an underground facility. None of them knows how they arrived there, and the environment around them suggests that their captivity is part of a deliberate and highly organized experiment. Shortly after regaining consciousness, the characters are contacted by a mysterious figure who communicates through an intercom system. The voice informs them that their situation is not random: they have been selected and must prove themselves worthy by solving a sequence of puzzles and escaping their confinement. Failure to do so could result in fatal consequences, immediately establishing a sense of urgency and psychological tension. The narrative slowly unfolds through exploration, dialogue, and the discovery of documents scattered throughout the environment. Each of the three captives—Samantha Blake, Benjamin Clarke, and Stephen Parfitt—has a personal history that gradually becomes relevant to the situation they find themselves in. As players progress through the game, fragments of these backstories emerge through recordings, notes, and conversations between the characters. These revelations hint at the deeper motives behind the mysterious trial and raise questions about whether the characters’ past actions played a role in their selection. A distinctive feature of The Initiate 2 is its use of multiple playable characters. Rather than controlling a single protagonist throughout the game, players alternate between the three captives, each confined to different areas of the facility. This mechanic significantly expands the scope of the puzzle design. Many challenges cannot be solved by one character alone and instead require cooperation between the three individuals. Information discovered by one character may provide the key to unlocking a puzzle faced by another, forcing players to constantly switch perspectives and think about the environment as a shared system rather than a series of isolated rooms. The puzzles themselves are the central focus of the game and vary widely in style and complexity. Some tasks involve traditional logic problems such as code breaking or pattern recognition, while others require careful observation of the environment to uncover hidden clues. Mechanical devices, locked compartments, computer terminals, and symbolic riddles appear throughout the facility, each requiring a different approach to solve. Because many puzzles are interconnected, solving one often reveals information or tools that lead to progress elsewhere. This layered structure encourages players to think critically about how different pieces of information relate to each other. Exploration plays a crucial role in uncovering these clues. Nearly every object in the environment can be inspected or manipulated, allowing players to closely examine items that might initially appear insignificant. The game rewards careful attention to detail, as small hints or subtle markings may contain essential information needed to progress. Players frequently find themselves revisiting earlier locations with new insights, discovering solutions that were impossible to recognize during their first visit. The environment itself contribute…

It's pretty good. Once you have all three characters it starts to become very obvious what needs to happen across the three rooms to move things along (with sharing certain items etc) and it had a really good rhythm/flow to just keep pushing forward while switching between the characters on the fly. There are clunky issues in there with the inventory system and also a few technical issues here or there, but they are mostly minor things. If you save often you'll be fine. Mostly logical if you pay attention to the finer details hidden in plain sight, although I did need a walkthrough to bash through some riddles that were in there (and felt out of place as there was no way to bypass them if you're stuck as they require exact worded answers you type in). A fair few puzzles you can also brute force which was amusing, but often the easy logical answer is the correct one. A decent escape room that you should be able to clear in under 5hrs play time.

I liked this one even more than the 1st Initiate game. This is a much more polished game and the puzzles and riddles are very challenging and well thought. Recommended for any escape room/puzzle game fan.