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The Eyes of Ara is a first-person point-and-click adventure that tries to harken back to the genre’s golden era, evoking games like Myst with its puzzle design and mysterious, eerie atmosphere. The game, however, falters with its shallow story, uneven puzzles, and cumbersome control scheme on the Nintendo Switch.
The game opens with the protagonist – who is never named nor shown – arriving at a medieval castle by boat. A letter explains their mission: a strange signal is emanating from the castle and disrupting communications in the region, so they are to find its source and shut it down.
When you manage to enter the castle – even its entrance is locked behind a puzzle, [...]
Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy is the sixth and – hitherto – last game in the series to feature the archeologist Hershell Layton as the protagonist. It is, however, an uneven game that tries to offer more freedom to the player but at the expense of pacing and narrative focus. It still has its share of bizarre and tragic characters, but the narrative loses steam too soon to have the same impact of previous installments.
The story begins when Layton receives a letter from an esteemed professor that tells him of an archeological breakthrough: professor Sycamore claims that he’s found a “living mummy” in the isolated and snow-laden town of Fraenbourg. Hershell Layton, [...]
The Night of the Rabbit follows the classic formula of the point-and-click adventure genre: it tries to immerse the player in a fantastical world, with a strong focus on story and atmosphere, while structuring the action around puzzle solving. Here, Daedelic Entertainment presents a fairy tale – with talking animals and evil magicians – and is successful in building an optimistic tone: embodied by the protagonist, this optimism is the main responsible for injecting energy into the story.
Jeremiah Hazelnut is a boy who lives far away from his colleagues, isolated with his mother on the edge of a forest. There are only two days of summer vacation left and his mission is to [...]
The Red Strings Club is a cyberpunk bartender game in which you pour special drinks to get information out of people. Although the game succeeds in developing its themes of free will, power, and (the lack of) agency, its all-over-the-place structure hampers some parts of the experience.
You mainly play as Donovan, the bartender of The Red Strings Club that is an information broker on the side. Donovan can “use spirits to tune into customers’ emotions,” to allow them “to savour, mourn, or contemplate their souls’ fundamental sentiments.” In practice, this means each customer will have some circles over them displaying certain states of mind, like anxiety, regret, and pride. [...]
Gone Home is a narrative-adventure game that focuses on exploration and environmental storytelling but relies too much on red herrings to fully work: its attempts to build suspense – and even horror – fall flat, serving only to distract us from the important themes being discussed.
We control Kaitlin Greenbriar, a young woman who has just returned home from a long trip through Europe on a rainy night in 1995 and discovered her house empty. A note from her younger sister, Sam, is nailed to the door, apologizing to Kaitlin, and urging the woman to not look for her. The goal is to find out what happened to every member of the Greenbriar family while trying to unravel the mystery [...]
Contrary to what is usual in the gaming industry, it is extremely likely that the story of To the Moon was developed before its gameplay. Nevertheless, by emphasizing the construction of the narrative rather than how its events are controlled or guided by the player, Freebird Games still manages to create a unique and unforgettable experience. In To the Moon, it’s the story that captivates, the gameplay is just a mere tool to help tell it.
The game follows two scientists, Eva Rosalene and Neil Watts, who are hired to realize the dream of Johnny, an old man on his deathbed: he wants to go to the Moon. With the help of a [...]