Recent reviews by krinat

Two of my favorite things in the whole wide world are steampunk and adventure games. I was really looking forward to playing this game and immersing myself in Jules Verne's extraordinary journeys. The love for Verne and his creations radiated from this game, but sadly I have some reservations about its execution. Trying to come up with a clear review has been difficult, so I think a simple pros/cons list will do the trick.

Pros:
* Art - The pixelated art is goregus - I took so many screenshots of it. It's obvious the studio wanted us to do so since it's built into the gameplay mechanics to allow you to zoom out and view the astounding scenery.
* Refrences - the game provides excellent references to Verne's books, characters, and writings and provides extensive texts explaining Verne's world.
* Themes - The game covers a wide range of in-depth topics, such as dealing with criticism as a writer, dealing with grief and loss, and dealing with tyrannical and oppressive empires.
* Heart - A lot of thought and effort went into this game, and I can really feel it.

Neutral:
Especially for a small indie studio, voice acting and music are OK, but they could be better. In some ways, Verne's lack of French-accented English speech breaks the immersion.

Cons:
* Gameplay - this is a more personal reservation. This was not the point and click adventure game I expected, but rather a side-scroller adventure game with limited dialog trees, annoying stealth sequences, quick time events, and basic platforming (mainly climbing) and puzzles. I found the mix to be a bit odd and not very conducive to immersion, even though it's an innovative approach to adventure gaming. The imag mechanic - the option to manipulate time in order to solve some hurdles - is kinda of basic and you don't really feel that your choices matter.
* Narrative - the game throws a lot of information at you at the beginning and asks you to buy into an alternative history where Verne is a scientist working aboard the Nautilus for Captain Nemo against the tyrannical forces of the "The Nation" (not the actual British empire from the book). Verne and Nemo are looking for Atlantis-related artifacts to help them in their fight against the nation but Nemo is increasingly becoming unreliable. The game jumps between various points in time and it is sometimes hard to get a grasp of the overall concept and why we should care. During the later stages of the game, the real themes of the game become more apparent and the narrative becomes more engrossing. But as I’ve mentioned, at the beginning and middle, it's a little confusing and I didn't feel an emotional connection to any of the characters.

Despite this criticism, I recommend this "love letter" to Verne to fans of Verne and steampunk. Gametopia showed that it has a lot of potential and deals with interesting subjects, so I'm looking forward to seeing what they create next.

I first learned about Jenny LeClue a few years ago through Adventuregamers, after it had already been funded on Kickstarter. I followed the progression of the game through the developer's page and eagerly awaited the arrival of this beautifully animated detective game, led by a young girl no less!
I regret to say that even though the developers obviously put a lot of effort in this game, it’s poorly constructed in terms of gameplay, plot and pace. After spending 21 hours of my life on it, which I’m never getting back, I feel a bit outraged – so forgive my long review and negative rant. I really regret being a completionist since I otherwise would have deserted the game maybe an hour after trying it.
The thing that bothers me most is that even though the protagonist is a child, I didn’t expect the game to be aimed at kids and did not see any indication in the description or marketing that this was the case. But the pace and gameplay scream “slowed for kids to follow”, with repetitive and easy mechanics. I was expecting a cool, funny and challenging point and click adventure game, and got a visual novel with some low-challenge platforming and a frustratingly slow pace. Speaking of miscommunicating what the game is – nowhere is it mentioned that the game has countless boring and unchallenging platformer sequences.
I want to focus on the clunky and annoying mechanics – instead of clicking on items to make them work, the game forces you to tap repeatedly each time. What’s wrong with a simple point and click? Why do you have to make the players work hard to do something simple? The dialogues force you to press the enter button after each short sentence or description, and there’s a lot of them. Sometimes a magnifying glass appears and you have to search the screen for something hidden and hold till you see what it is. Every gameplay mechanic is repetitive and annoying – you find stickers for your journal (not interesting if you’re above a certain age), you have the simplest “put together parts of postcards”, you have to make electrical circuits work with the right flow. The only original puzzles in the game are syncing radio waves together to get messages, and deciphering messages from a book with a certain code. Though the puzzles are simple and not creative in general, the real sin is how much they recur; after the third identical puzzle solution (breaking a barrier by tapping 30 times in different places, for instance, which I had to do at least 5 times) – it’s not fun.
It takes the game forever to move past the introduction and actually get to the main mystery, and even after the long unveiling we’re left with a bunch of tired tropes (evil corporation! Cover-up! Things not as they seem! What is ridiculed at first is actually true!). To make matters worse, a lot of things are left unexplained and unaddressed, and the game ends with a cliffhanger! Yes, you get the infamous “to be continued” at the end after only part of the issues were resolved. A very long game just to get to a half-resolution so the developers can compel you to buy their next game? Not cool. Also, the frame story in which an author of detective stories struggles with his editor’s demand to make Jenny’s world more gruesome and murderous adds very little to the plot, is a tired trope, and makes the game longer with little value in return.
The music, like the gameplay, is repetitive and gets old very fast, and there is no voice acting that might have brought some flair to otherwise-stereotypical characters.
The art is really the one aspect that makes the game shine, and I really wish that the rest of the game had aligned with that.