Publisher: COWCAT
What I Paid: $1.50 (Nintendo Switch), $2.24 (XBox Series X)
Verdict: Not Shovelware.
What I Say:
In short: Bargain! Classic point ‘n’ click with modern conveniences.
Watching the end credits of this game made me realize that this was a Kickstarter assisted solo-developer project, so I did some reading on the project’s background after finishing the game and before writing this review.
The developer, Fabrice Breton, says that this game was first developed between 1999 and 2001 but never found a release. It was reworked for modern release platforms and here we are. Of note: Fabrice is French and wrote the English text himself, so there are plenty of minor grammatical errors in the English text, albeit none fatal.
Bjorn and Sandra are your anti-heros. Both are slovenly, selfish and lazy. Bjorn is an antiques dealer. Sandra is a nurse. One day, Bjorn is robbed at home with the thief basically taking one solitary item. Exploring why this item is important forms the key motivation for this game.
With lots of crude humour and many, many ways to die (think Space Quest level Game Overs here) there are lots of nods to adventure games of yore here. Fortunately, all the puzzles are logical and not too hard to figure out so getting stuck isn’t a huge problem. The only really annoying Game Overs come late in the game when you have to decipher a map. I won’t say more to avoid spoilers, but this made me loathe to play the game again to pick up the cookies and Game Overs that I missed the first time through.
One really nice touch is that almost everything has a unique response associated with it, so trying illogical items on the environment and on your inventory is very rewarding. Another game mechanic which effectively rewards pixel hunting and ensures that you locate all hot spots is searching for “cookies” on screen – every screen has 3 hidden cookies which are often very difficult to find, even with the built-in zoom function. The cookies are key to an inbuilt hint system (I finished the game without the use of hints).
One final modern convenience that I appreciated was the auto-save function which activated every time you changed screen, ensuring that progress is never lost. You can still save manually whenever you please.
One hint I’ll leave you with: if you are truly stuck with a puzzle, go back and talk to everyone again. Sometimes additional unexpected dialogue options open up which can hold the key to the solution.
What They Say:
Bjorn Thonen, a slob of an antique dealer living in Paris, is robbed one night after coming home drunk. Forced to conduct his own investigation with the help of his neighbor Sandra, he ends up involved in a murky, mysterious affair.
Will these unlikely heroes be able to rise up and discover ancient secrets?
Fully translated into English, French, Spanish, Italian, German and Russian
A long, varied, standalone adventure (8 to 12 hours of gameplay)
Over 15,000 lines of dialog
Hand drawn art in Full HD
A high level of interactivity
Multiple, fun mini-games integrated into the story
In-game hints : Search and collect hidden cookies on every screen!
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