Pros

• Weekly Episodic Delivery: They released new Xi rooms, zones, and levels every single week which made it feel fresh and alive.
• Playing alongside strangers: This worked particularly well when combined with the weekly new content.
• Immersion: Xi isn’t launched from Home, it’s in Home. Playing as my own Home avatar in the Home universe felt much more immersive than running a separate app.
• Clever mini-games: Highlights were the ghost maze and the two miniature text adventures.
• More than a sum of its parts: The whole experience was very unique and fresh as a whole yet most of the individual puzzles and mini-games were fairly generic. Most of those mini-games couldn’t compete on a standard Flash web game portal, yet in the context of Xi and Home, they were lots of fun.

Cons

• Glitchy: This game had dozens of glitches and had lots of technical rough edges. This was more than a minor annoyance and I periodically had to search the net to resolve the issue.
• Difficulty: Most of the Butterfly puzzles were completely impossible without using a walkthrough guide. I bet no more than 1% of the player base did those things without a walkthrough.
• Plot and Dialog: I think this was written for the Twilight-crowd. I couldn’t stand it. The Jess character, the idiotic plot, the bad alternative music… SEMI-SPOILER: Destroy Xi if you make it to the end.
• Uninspired mini-games: Some of the mini-games were great, while others were very bland.

Wish list

A full-blown Myst style adventure game within Home and integrated into various existing spaces. Also, I’m sure whatever nDreams does next will be worth checking out.