August Assassination #1

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The last three point&click adventure games I had played before Technobabylon were all a bit underwhelming, so I started this game without expecting much. But honestly, I was blown away by how good it was.

So, it had a great and detailed pixel artstyle that is consistent throughout the whole game. Character portraits are the best part, animations I would say are the weakest since they sometimes feel a bit stiff, but all in all, the game exhudes artistry in its visual design. Sound design is also excellent, with the voice acting being particularly good in helping flesh out the game and the story. Environmental sound effects were mostly fine, maybe unremarkable for the most part, but I love the sound effects you have when interacting with technology (such as entering and exiting Trance). It helps to sell the universe.

Mechanically, the game is your standard fare point&click game, but the episodic structure helps to alleviate inventory bloat and keep puzzles and scenarios relatively well contained. Most chapters have an intro cutscene, then a playspace which hardly exceeds 3 or 4 screens and 7 or 8 items you need to use, followed by an outro cutscene. This helps to make the pacing excellent, avoids frustration with having open ended puzzles and not knowing whether you have all the necessary items, and cuts on backtracking, making the moment to moment gameplay really enjoyable. This is really good design and other point & click games would benefit from that. If I could ask for one additional feature, would be a way to highlight interactables in a screen without having to pixel hunt. That would help me avoid a few instances where I thought I had found everything I could interact with, when in reality I had missed a small prop on one corner of the screen.

But the real meat of the game is the writing. Everything I've written so far are good things the game offers, but that wouldn't hold the game alone. The writing, the universe, the theming, the context, those things are enough to hold the game on its own. Heck, if there were books or movies set in this universe, I would consume them. It's such a well fleshed-out universe, and the plot utilizes it really well. I love the kind of small details that don't matter but help to flush out the world -- for instance, at one point, you can look at a world map and see the nations (or nation blocks) that are represented there. It's not reaaaaally that important from a gameplay perspective (it is one possible solution for a puzzle, but not mandatory), but hell, it was fun to see how the world looked like and imagine what chain of events led to this nation distribution and world order. Then you get small pieces of news that hint at world events, and all those things just help so much to make the world entirely believable. That was my favorite part.

The plot is mostly fine, characters are interesting and nuanced, but in the second half I felt the plot got too confusing and hard to follow, with a lot of twists. Not bad by any measures, but not my favorite element either.

TL;DR - if you are after a great universe setup, buy this immediately. If you're looking for a modern and streamlined point&click adventure, buy this immediately. If you're looking for an artistic passion project which doesn't compromise on gameplay or plot, buy this immediately. If you see anything from Wadjet Eye Games, you probably should buy it immediately