12.1 hours played
Written 1 month and 1 day ago
[b]TLDR[/b] A traditional point-and-click adventure game with a heavy comedic tone, looks great but the writing is all over the place, the puzzles fairly simple. [13/20⭐, 10h🏅, 2/5💡]
[b]Context[/b] Another classic point-and-click adventure game from Daedalic, this one being a comedy in contrast to [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/macwh/recommended/327220/]others[/url] [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/macwh/recommended/314790/]I’ve[/url] [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/macwh/recommended/230820/]tried[/url] [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/macwh/recommended/268540/]before[/url]. However, I continue to have trouble finding them engaging: the writing misses the mark, and the puzzles are mostly mediocre.
[b]Writing[/b] The game takes place in the titular Deponia, a post-apocalyptic junk world where the playable character, Rufus, lives. Rufus is not what you’d call a productive member of society: his only concern is escaping to Elysium, a utopian floating city, regardless of the damage caused to anything and anyone around him. In an attempt he “saves” an Elysian, Goal, who in the process falls into Deponia. Rufus spends the game helping the Elysian / himself get to Elysium.
This a cartoonish, absurd comedy game, so it may sound like I’m being too picky, but the overall plot is just lazily written. [spoiler]Why were Goal and Argus already on the ship? How can Elysians believe that Deponia is uninhabited is they are just floating over it? How can it be so easy for anyone to swap Goal’s mind?[/spoiler] Regardless, one could still enjoy the journey despite the big picture. Except that Rufus is an obnoxious and unlikable character without any redeemable quality, and his dialogs are often juvenile and cringe inducing. The game in general tries too hard to be funny and succeeding only occasionally. I admit part of this may be due to English not being the game's original language.
[b]Aesthetics[/b] The game has a colorful, hand drawn-like style that fits well with its silly and slapstick comedy tone. The soundtrack tries to be playful and upbeat, but gets annoying and repetitive fast. The voice acting is decent for the style of the game.
[b]Gameplay[/b] This is a completely traditional point-and-click adventure game, you progress by dialogging with NPCs and collecting, combining and using items. There are also a few logic puzzles along the way.
The game is not particularly challenging, and it’s clear the devs wanted to avoid a frustrating experience. You can highlight the hotspots in the background, so no infamous pixel hunt. The logic puzzles are also skippable without penalties. In the first chapter you also get a couple of checklists to keep track of the objectives. And you can double click for instant-travel between areas, which is a must when there is a lot of moving around. There are no deadends or gameovers, and the the game auto-saves, but you can also save/load at any time.
I did encounter a game-breaking bug [spoiler](in the magnets puzzle)[/spoiler] that cost me quite some time to identify (apparently the devs are aware, but the solution was to share fixed savefiles rather than fix the cause).
[b]Value[/b] It took me about 8h to beat the game, and then about 1.5h to get all the achievements (which, inexplicably, required a full new playthrough where the dialogs are replaced by gibberish). There are unlimited save slots that can be used to revisit previous chapters (and get missing achievements, except for the one mentioned above). Achievements are mostly connected to progressing the game, not skipping puzzles, or finding hidden interactions. The plot is linear, except for puzzles that can be solved in arbitrary order. As all Daedalic games, this seems to be on sale very often, so at least don’t spend the full price on it.
[quote][i]For more puzzle-game reviews and curated lists check out the [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/43326007-The-Clueless-Adventurer-Puzzle-Trove/]Puzzle Trove[/url].[/i][/quote]
