The Silent Age is a short, charming game with beautiful artwork, an intriguing story, and intuitive puzzles.

I played this game back when it was first released for the mobile platform back in 2012 and the only real difference that I can find is that the game is now divided into ten spread out chapters instead of three. Apart from that, the game is quite the same.

The story to this point-and-click adventure game is quite intriguing. You play as a janitor in a defence corporation called Joe who has just been "promoted" to clean more areas since his partner has left the firm. On his first trip to the secret laboratory area to perform his duties, he finds lots of blood in the basement and tries to warn management about it only to be dismissed. Adamant to find out what happened and see if anyone needs any aid, he stumbles into an dying old man who has apparently been shot. This old man claims that he is a time traveller and hands Joe a device while telling Joe to complete the task that he came to complete before Joe gets arrested.

The story proceeds further to reveal more and more information about everything and it perfectly captures the bizzare sense of time travel quite perfectly as Joe finds himself unable to come face to face with the reality that he sees unfolding in front of himself in contrast to the grasp on reality that already holds. The tale becomes slow for a while in the middle and I would blame that on the game not dividing the chapters well enough with some of the early ones boiling down to only gameplay mechanics and what feels like a drawn out sequence instead of the game revealing any kind of information to you. But by the end, you can expect to be thrown in for a huge loop and even though you see the ending coming, it's still very well connected and executed. There's also a certain sense of humour laced throughout the dialogue in most cases. All in all, it's a solid story.

The game also full of beautiful artwork that really breathes life into every single scene and makes it so much easier to tell the Future from the Present. Even though the style is mostly flat, the colour palette used adds a level of intrigue and beauty to every single scene. Not only that, there are lots of tiny details added to every little facet of the game that make different scenes just fit in. Be it the damage done to structures due to the passage of time in the future or the dirt and grime on unused objects or even how things in the present tend to be polished but at the same time, well worn for the most part. The Present even has a strong retro vibe to it, just adding more immersion to the game. The choice of colour palate really shines through especially during specific scenes such as the outdoors or the twilight hours or discotheques and other vividly coloured places. Every little detail in these scenes not only add to the immersion but also add a sense of ominous intrigue to it all.

As far as the gameplay mechanics are concerned, it's a simple point-and-click adventure, but with the twist of time-travel. You've got a portable time machine that's solar charged which allows you to travel instantaneously between the present and the future. The solutions to most of the puzzles are also pretty intuitive for the most part and this game in specific does not suffer from the use of cartoon logic like other games of this genre. Everything is clear cut and logical. The game is even generous enough to through you hints about how to use something if you get close enough to the answer either by trying to use the right device in a similar situation or if you click on puzzle enough times. Of course, in the end, you'll have to figure it out yourself. The protagonist also roasts you from time to time with his sass when you're trying to do something incredibly dumb such as filling up a fire extinguisher with inflammable oil. The time-travel mechanic is pretty revolutionary and immersive, and it essentially enables you to solve puzzles by making changes in the present to obtain the fruits in the future or by grabbing something from the future that use can use in the present. That being said, there is a heavy reliance on switching between the present and the future to gain access to certain areas of the game and while it does add to the immersion of the apocalyptic event, the game tends to overuse it sometimes. This can occasionally get to the point where you're forced to switch timelines once every scene just so that you can head from one section of the level to the next. When that happens, the mechanic tends to be more annoying to use rather than intriguing. There's also one particular level, Chapter 8. Outside Archon, where the solutions to problems are little obtuse. I personally got stuck in that exact level back when I played it on my Android and once again when I replayed the game yesterday. I feel like it was a developer oversight for the most part, but that is the only level that I thought was extremely confusing. The rest of the game is pretty intuitive to solve and the time-travel mechanic typically tends to add a whole new dimension to the game.

The sounds design is also on point. The atmosphere is heavy and ominous, exactly as expected from a science fiction video game. It dips when it needs to emphasise the empty and desolate nature of the place and at other times it populates the place with appropriate background as could be expected to hear in the place. I also feel like they've done a good job with the voice lines, although I don't remember if they added them for the PC release since I didn't originally play the game with headphones on. However, there are instances where there isn't a cutscene and you hear a voice line in the form of an exclamation, but it stops from there on out, letting you read the rest of the text yourself. The text descriptions also tend to disappear a little too fast in some instances. To add another negative point, the intro music, while ambient in an ominous way, tends to be way too loud at time. I wish the developers had added a sound control to the game or at least flattened the peaks a little because it was practically ear shattering at those points and dead silent at others. But all in all, the sound design is also impressive and adds to the atmosphere by a ton.

Finally, to address bugs, this game has next to none of them. Apart from the occasional design oversight, the only bugs I found were naming issues for the most part. In specific cases, the text popup whenever you interact with certain objects shows the names that the developers use instead of the ones the gamers should see. For instance, "tied_rope_with_katana." This game also has a mechanic where things in the dark cannot be interacted with. However, running your mouse over them still shows them in the text popup even though they might actually be hidden once you manage to illuminate the area. An example would be the trapdoor hidden under the rug. By the time I illuminated the area, I already knew that there was a trapdoor there and was actually surprised to see a rug instead. But by that point, a part of the puzzle had already revealed itself to me. Despite that, none of the bugs are actually game breaking and just manage to barely break the immersion by a miniscule margin at best.

All in all, The Silent Age is a game with a brilliant story that is going to take you through an emotional journey full of twists and turns, amazing artwork that adds to the flavour and intrigue of each area and gives everything more depth and character, sound that gives everything a very eerie and ominous vibe, and game mechanics that are deep, but also very intuitive and engaging. There are bugs but they don't break the game even a bit although a certain part of the game can get a little frustrating to complete. In the end, The Silent Age is a brilliant gem that is definitely worth playing.

This game has lived rent free in my mind since I first came across it back in 2015. The art style, the 60/70s setting, the puzzles and most of all the storyline. A very fun (if short) journey.

really good point and click puzzle adventure game. the time travel mechanic was integrated with puzzles and the narrative well, and I enjoyed the story despite knowing how it "ends" in the future; the journey itself was a lot of fun!