Technobabylon (2015)

Started on Technobabylon, a Wadjet Eye produced (but not developed) game. Like Blackwell Epiphany, it's got Ben Chandler doing art in a 640x400 resolution, and again it looks as gorgeous as pixel art at this res is ever going to (I'll be interested to see how their upcoming game Old Skies ends up looking, as it's Ben doing HD art!). Also, it has the massive portraits like Epiphany, and the inability to turn off subtitles like Primordia had until a very recent patch (that came along shortly after I tweeted them to ask if it was possible, so I suspect that was thanks to me!). As far as I can tell, though - no egg-timer! Hooray!

So far, it's pretty cool. It's a cyberpunk story with lots of structural playfulness - multiple POV characters, flashbacks - and lots of cool world-building. It starts off with you stuck in your shitty welfare apartment because the internet has gone down and so your door won't open. Potentially a dull start to a game, but here you're using wetware goop to hack into stuff, giving viruses to your home appliances and pitting their digital mascots against each other, so it's good fun. The juxtaposition between the cyberspace with its floating anime heads and glowy icons, and your scuzzy apartment full of dirty clothes and dripping food is really effective. The writing is strong as well.

There are some minor issues - the UI isn't quite as slick as it should be (too many steps and mouse journeys to everything), sometimes the worldbuilding is subtle enough that it obfuscates puzzle logic, and the voice acting is sometimes a little off (line misreads, or a bit stagey) - but overall so far it's very engaging. 

Played a bit more of this. It switched to the detective co-protagonist and the game got a little less interesting, a little more clunky. The dialogue is a bit more wrought and contrived, and some of the puzzles are a bit wonkier. Also, it's got that Wadjet Eye feel to the VO where everyone's dour and grumbly and it's just a bit wearing after a while. (Also, Dave tries his hand at a Texan religous zealot this time round!) Production values are still impressive, though, and I like the second detective on the case, Lao (who happens to be trans, which is nice to see included - and I think it only gets mentioned on an optional dialogue thread, which is cool, though Ed Fear would call this second wave rep and want to see more focus on it!). It's just brought the timelines of the two player-characters together and reveal how one was affecting the other, which was fun, so I'm hoping it perks up again. 

I finished Technobabylon. It's gorgeous throughout, really nicely presented, and the VO is all great, no clunkers. But puzzles and dialogue wise it ended up feeling like a bit of a slog. There's clearly been a lot of work put into the background lore, but instead of hinting towards it, every conversation, every dialogue tree is twice as long as it needs to be, it's all incredibly didactic, and the writer seems aware of it because the player characters are mainly there to listen to a long diatribe and then reply "so you're saying [five word down-to-earth summary]".

The plot is overly-complex too, I found myself not really following or caring about all the many evil scientists and politicians and what have you and their various schemes. 

And there were some fun puzzles where you're taking out evil soldiers and stuff, but also a lot of looking through files and replacing cannisters with other cannisters and interacting with UIs. Even the 'fun action-scene' puzzles felt fiddly and drawn out, there was never any change in pace. And frustration was added on top when the way that future stuff works wasn't explained properly, so after finally figuring something out (or brute forcing it or using a walkthrough) my reaction was too often 'oh, that's how that thing works' rather than 'oh, I should have got that, what a clever puzzle'. That, combined with a few regular puzzles that just had poor signposting or bullshit pixel-hunts, made for a pretty bumpy experience.