Developer: Rundisc | Released: 2023 | Genre: Adventure, Point & Click
This game received an overwhelmingly positive user rating on Steam. Although I agree it was very well done, with a amazing drawn style that reminded me of both Sable and the graphical novel art by Moebius, and an intriguing climb of the tower of babel while deciphering glyphs to understand the languages of the people living there, it did have a few things that dragged it down ever so slightly for me.
As a true point-and-click adventure with a minimal inventory, I had to walk around and collect more glyphs from people and objects. After watching some of them used in situations that could give a hint about what they mean, a notebook is opened with about 3-6 glyphs and a few drawings. Time to guess what that set means. The more glyphs guessed, the easier it is to understand what you need to do on that level.
There are about five levels to climb in the enormous tower, and each level have several interconnected locations like in oldskool adventure games. It’s not just clicking objects to pick up and use, sometimes there are genuine stealth sequences too. Typically a ghostly destination figure is shown that, when clicked, makes your characters sneak over there – hopefully without being spotted.
Each level has its own visual style, and its own language to be deciphered.
The user interface for deciphering glyphs is well designed and it was often fun trying to guess what they meant by dragging them into placeholders in the notebook. It was even possible to type in a few temporary names before guessing, which could help understand what to do with a mechanic puzzle.
However, sometimes it felt like the game was a little too quick on the take and had me guessing glyphs I was no where near having grasped yet. Sometimes I could postpone this and try to learn more about the level I was on, but often I just got plain stubborn and resorted to the old adventure game trope – trial-and-error. This could be really arduous, if there was still a lot of unknown glyphs to be guessed.
123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 321, 324, 325, 326, 327, 328, etc.
Some of the stealth areas could also get challenging and I often couldn’t help thinking that the game might have been better without them. One of the five levels even took place among guards that required me to sneak around almost all the time, until luckily I got hold of a disguise later.
I liked how a guard or a monster attacking showed his or its shadow zooming in on the entire screen.
The first level had noisy magpies. I really hate that bird.
The humanoids on the third level thought I was an idiot (in those words) for trying to ascend the tower.
The fourth level was a short stealth sequence around a monster that didn’t like light. This could be used to my advantage by lifting walls that shed more light in the area.
The fifth level with the laboratories and the mining of silver, gold and copper was where I started to lose my patience with the game. I got stuck a few times, and in that really annoying way where I revisited the same rooms over and over for almost an eternity, then got a hint from the internet and slapped my neck for not figuring out what was actually a logical and sensible step.
I certainly didn’t have any patience left for the advanced ending. The difference between just climbing the tower and the advanced ending was like light and day. A whole lot of backtracking was involved, and I decided I could live without that.
Pros
- A stylish clear and detailed line art style with lots of very smooth scrolling.
- Often fun deciphering language glyphs with the excellent notebook user interface.
- Five levels in an enormous tower, each with its own visual style and its own language.
- Both the stealth sequences and some of the later lab puzzles can be challenging.
- Most of the levels are massive and it takes around 10 hours to get through the game.
- There are teleporters for easy traveling back to previously visited levels.
Cons
- It can be really tempting to go hardcore trial-and-error for guessing the glyphs.
- If you’re against stealth in adventure games, you might be annoyed by it in this game.