New game playthrough: "Theropods"!

New game!

I don't remember being overly obsessed with dinosaurs as a kid. But I was fourteen years old when Michael Crichton's book Jurassic Park was turned into a movie by my then favorite director Steven Spielberg. So yeah, that's when I started throwing around their names like the next generation did with Pokémon. I don't quite recall another adventure game previously featuring dinosaurs (except when Rex takes a bite out of crime in The Dagger of Amon Ra, but he's a museum exhibit so that doesn't count). I'm quite excited, therefore, to finally be able to play Theropods, a pixel art, point 'n click game about a young primal woman hunting dinosaurs to avenge her mother, who was killed by one of the terrible beasts. Or at least, that's what I assumed the story would be about after seeing the horrific intro...

A peaceful family excursion... For now...

The game has been ten years in the making by Lost Token, and has finally been published by Dionous Games. The first thing to adjust to, is the lack of dialogue and other texts. That's partly why I never really got into the Amanita games. I love my dialogues too much, talking to other characters, getting clues and learning the story and backgrounds that way. In Theropods, it all comes down to gestures and inflections in their (made-up) language. It means listening carefully to how the main character grunts when you click on something, which can either mean "Nope" or "Perhaps..." The latter means you might need another item first, or that it's perhaps not the right time to do it yet.

A peaceful little settlement... For now...

There are suprisingly few hotspots, even though there's lots of activity and details in the locations. I found the hotspots were pretty hard to find, without labels and only a colour change in the cursor. And even then I wasn't always sure what I was looking at, or even what I had just picked up. And it's difficult using an inventory item when you don't even know what it is exactly. There's not much to the gameplay, which mostly entails figuring out the right order of where to click, with rarely more than one screen to play around in. I'm sorry to say I often resorted to using everything on everything, after employing the hotspot highlighter - which I normally never do! - just to make sure I hadn't missed anything during my thorough pixel hunt of that location. 

Caught him!

But other than that, Theropods is a fun game. The pixel art and animations are gorgeous and it's exactly their allure that made me want to play this game. I certainly wasn't disappointed in that regard. Even more astounding is the soundtrack. There's no other word to use than epic. It sounds full orchestral and when it comes to the genre or type of music it goes from The Lion King to indeed Jurassic Park, reminding me of composers like John Williams, James Horner and Alan Silvestri. The music seems to quicken and get more bombastic as you go from one isolated crisis to another. This leads to a very fast-paced story, from dinosaur hunting to a barbarian raid, from escaping T-Rex attacks to avoiding a spinosaurus underwater.

Could be Mara Whitefish's ancestor...

The game consists of six short chapters, and I played through them all in a total of two and a half hours. There are many cutscenes knitting the playable parts together. For some reason (I guess resolution related) these clips are smaller than the regular full screen, like an in-game movie screen with a stone border. You can skip these scenes, but really, why would you? They are equally gorgeous to look at. Unless you want to replay to go achievement hunting; there's supposed to be a dog hidden somewhere in the game, but I didn't find it... 

Here, fishy fishy fishy...

There's also a sci-fi element to Theropods. It's no spoiler, because it's in the game's description: an alien spacecraft crashes down on earth and its occupant gets tangled up in the entire dinosaur/barbarian situation. No, it's not Adam Driver, but it is a fun second playable character, effectively teaming up with the cave woman. There are scenes where you only play as one or the other, but there are also situations where you have to manually switch between the two to get things done. Each one has their own inventory as well but the essence of the gameplay remains the same: figure out in which order you have to let them do something so the scene progresses.

Add dramatic rain animation...

Theropods is a much shorter game than I had hoped for (especially after playing Roots in the Sky for fourteen and a half hours; those playthrough posts are coming soon!) but that doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile. Granted, the lack of text as some basic guidance can be frustrating if you're not used to games like that, but in the end none of the obstacles is ever that hard to overcome. Developer Lost Token has put together a fun and exciting story, a perfect alternative to watching an action-adventure movie if you have a couple of hours to spare. While pixel art, it harks back to cinematic experiences like The Land Before Time, of course because of that dinosaur theme but also in style and general atmosphere. It looks very cute from afar, but there definitely are some darker (think Negan in The Walking Dead) moments.

You can find Theropods on Steam, GOG and itch.io!

"Cult Vacui", my Adventure Game Hotspot review!

Read my full review on Adventure Game Hotspot!

Excerpt: "Cult Vacui is a valiant effort to present a point-and-click survival adventure with a time management system, but I must admit I was expecting more. All the puzzles are very straightforward, it’s obvious what you have to do to prepare yourself for an optimal defense against the attack of the cult, and it’s hard to miss anything important. Hard, but not impossible, because the fairly strict time restriction doesn’t allow for much leeway in your sequence of events. Thanks to the manual save system, though, you can easily go back a few steps and do things differently, resulting in a game that takes less time to finish than I took writing this review. It still lacks some polish, but the pixel art graphics are a joy to behold, the haunting music will keep you on the edge of your seat, and the story is suspenseful enough to keep you going. You’d think that defeating an evil cult might require a little more time and effort, but all in all, it’s a tidy bit of business for a couple hours of work."

Deepwood Forest is saved in "Mutants Ate My Carrots"!

Nice place to lounge...

When I previously played Mutants Ate My Carrots, I had just discovered that, well, mutants ate my carrots. Genetically altered animals were fed Blackjack's special black carrots in a secret laboratory to give them extra powers. So then it was up to me to defeat these mutants in combat, and stop the people responsible.

This spider will get me a brand new outfit...

Usually I'm not that into cartoony games with animal characters. I like my adventure games more realistic. But this quirky story pushes the right buttons. The vibrant colors; the funny characters that often don't take the game itself very seriously, glancing at the player for a moment in frustration or hilarity; the manageable "combat"; but also the more gruesome aspects like the weird mutations and the chaos at the lab. It's not only a fuzzy afternoon cartoon; it's not afraid to show violence and death as well. 

All true adventurers need a fast-travel map...

After resurfacing from that lab, a whole now part of Deepwood Forest opened up, so I was very glad to have acquired a fast-travel map to switch locations more fluently, since some things took some back and forth. Though I did notice I had missed some things here and there, so it's not a bad idea to still take a stroll through the forest when you feel you're getting stuck.

Looks like a tricky door to get through...

I finished the game in three hours, and was actually sad it was over. To be honest it could have been over more quickly, because there were several occasions where it was totally not obvious to me which attack I had to employ against particular enemies, resulting in me trying out all of them one after another, often resulting in realizing I had to use something in the environment instead. The ending cinematic came rather quickly, but it was satisfying nonethless. Overall, it's a fun and none too difficult game, quite enjoyable because it offers something different, and perhaps even well suited to win over some gaming adolescents to the genre.

Speaking of adolescents, for my next playthrough game I'm going to pretend to be an 18-year old girl who is leaving her small hometown for the big city...

You can find Mutants Ate My Carrots on Steam.

New game: "Mutants Ate My Carrots"!

New game!

I don't know why it took me so long to play Mutants Ate My Carrots, developed by Animatic Vision and published by Dionous Games. I think it was the combat element that held me back. Action-adventures are more of a console thing to me. But frankly, I needn't have worried because this game is pure point 'n click, freaking hilarious and the combat is just a variation of an inventory puzzle!

Typical morning after...

I'm Blackjack, last one of the legendary Black Rabbits. There's a whole intro cinematic explaining my origins, so I won't go into it here. Most important part is that I cultivate black carrots which gives me extra strength. Think of that flower in the Black Panther movie... But one morning, I wake up and find someone stole all my carrots! A quest ensues!

And that there's 50% of the gameplay...

Searching the forest I meet several other animals, but as is typical for adventure games, they all want something in return before they will help me out. These interaction show what a wacky cartoon this game actually is. The dialogue is funny as well, and Blackjack is a perfect, grumpy protagonist, a veteran who has seen it all and just does what needs to be done.

Teach me, sensei!

But once in a while we have to exchange the wits path for the fists path. Blackjack has a couple of basic fighting skills, a quick punch and a power kick, but that's not enough to fight through this forest. Along the way, he can gradually pick up other skills, by collecting sensei Mon Ki's lost balls (the decorative kind) or by drinking special potions.

Boss fight!

Fighting usually entails incapacitating an enemy with some kind of inventory item first, or using special attacks for which they show a weakness. They'll block your normal attacks before you do this. These attacks can also be used to get past obstacles, for instance to kick open doors and jab through wood.

He he...

But the game has more layers than just traipsing around a forest and interact with all kinds of woodland creatures. There's more going on, with a strange underground lab where they did weird animal experiments. So after an hour of gameplay, I'm sure there's lots more to discover...

You can find Mutants Ate My Carrots on Steam.

"Murder on Space Station 52", my Adventure Game Hotspot review!

 

Read my full review on Adventure Game Hotspot!

Excerpt: "Sci-fi games usually aren’t my cup of tea, but Murder on Space Station 52 is a mystery game first and science fiction game second, so it doesn’t bombard you with loads of alien lore or technical/scientific stuff. As such, it succeeded in not only holding my interest, but actually making it a lot of fun. Despite its extraterrestrial setting, it’s a pretty straightforward, well-acted detective-style point-and-click investigation combining fetch quests and problem solving and information gathering through examination of hotspots and talking to possible suspects. Most of the puzzles are quite easy, and the logic needed to be applied is pretty much common sense, albeit with a couple of blatant exceptions. It’s too bad there isn’t more actual detective work involved in ultimately pinpointing the murderer in the bunch, but it nevertheless succeeded in making a non-sci-fi gamer like me boldly go where I never really liked to go before."