Until Next Next Fest, Then!

Steam's latest Next Fest ends today and I've played all the demos I chose, except for that one that won't run. The last two are both point and click adventures of a sort but they look, feel and play very differently. They're both professionally produced, written and programmed, with no bugs or technical errors that I encountered. One of them I really liked and the other... not so much.

The one I wasn't so fond of was Splittown. I should have known when I chose it that it wouldn't really work for me but I was intrigued by the thumbnail description: "Cold War has split the world in two. The Great Divide spans across the globe with an impenetrable wall between the two blocs. You are Leonard Nimby; stone-faced agent of IM5, hot on the trail of a shrink gun stolen from you by a villanous mayoral candidate on the eve of a fateful election."

Sounds interesting, if highly unoriginal, but if you're looking for originality, the point and click adventure genre would be a very poor place to start. The premise promises a nice mix of retro-SF and detective action, two things I like, which is why I decided to give the demo a try. I should have read on into the full write-up on the Steam Store page, where the true nature of the game is revealed: "Splittown is a point-and-click adventure game inspired by 90s classics such as Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max Hit The Road." 

 What's the point of a demo if it's not representative of the game?

Ah! It's one of those adventure games. The ones I find awkward to the point of embarassment. The ones with jokes I don't find funny and characters I find actively annoying. I would probably have given the whole thing a pass had I known it was aiming to follow in that tradition.

It does, and very accurately, at least from the perspective of someone who's always tended to abandon those games in the opening stages out of boredom and irritation, the very same reaction I had about twenty minutes into Splittown. It's by no means a bad game. It's probably a good game of its kind. It's just not a game I wanted to spend any more time playing.

It didn't help that I found the graphic style it employs jarring and ugly even back when it was new. Whatever the opposite of nostalgia might be, that's what I have for that harsh color palette, those fish-eye lens angles, those jagged edges. I'd be very happy never to see any of them again, especially in ersatz recreations like this. 

This made me laugh, although almost certainly for the wrong reason.

I also find, increasingly, I don't enjoy the gameplay. It sounds odd, considering how much I enjoy many other point and clicks, but this iteration is just too purist for my dilettante tastes. I much prefer the more contemporary take that brings in elements from visual novels to create a more fluid narrative experience. The classic style is just too herky-jerky. It has the same effect on me as listening to certain sixties' pop songs, with which, in a weird, indefinable way, these kinds of games seem to share a spiritual kinship.

Another thing I could really do without, from any style of game, is the locked room opening. I am very much more than done with starting off in a location I can't just walk out of. The methodology for escaping the locked room in this instance was reasonable and logical (Videogame-logical, anyway.) but the fact I was able to make my escape easily didn't make the experience in any way more entertainining or enjoyable.  

If your pun needs a hyphen to work, it probably isn't worth making.

The main reason I decided to give up on the demo twenty minutes in, however, was none of the above; it was something much more fundemental. It was because I felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of interactions available. Like one of those frustrating RPGs where every box, barrel and crate can be smashed or opened, pretty much everything on the screen could be moused over to be examined, used or talked to. When I made my way out of the second location into the third and found myself faced with a whole new room filled with possibilities, my patience evaporated and I bailed without a moment's thought.

Since then, I've felt not the least inclination to go back. The plot was solid enough but I never found myself caring what happened next so I'm happy to leave it in limbo and move on. That's no criticism of the game itself, which I'm sure will find and please an audience. It's just not going to be an audience I'm a part of any more, if ever I was. 

The plot, in a nutshell.

By contrast, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the oddly-named Zid Journey. I'd tell you just how long I spent there but I had to get up from the keyboard suddenly in the middle and I left the game idling. Steam tells me I spent nearly three hours playing. It was probably closer to an hour.

Like Splittown, Zid Journey describes itself as an "adventure game with a strong, classic 90's vibe" but it looks and plays so completely differently I find it hard to place the two games in the same tradition at all. Where Splittown is the visual equivalent of crumbs in your bed, all scratchy and uncomfortable, Zid Journey is a comfy, faux-fur throw, soft, curvy and warm.

You play as "Zid, a yellow dinosaur... as he goes on a journey to find the lost parents of a small Daspletosaurus hatchling." The specificity there gives you a hint of what to expect. This is another game that feels as likely to have its roots in educational software as in gaming. You'll meet a number of dinosaurs as you play and all of them come with detailed descriptions. Maybe there's a test at the end.

Will this be in the exam?

Not being a six year old child or a paleontologist, I wasn't interested so much in the taxonomy as in the anthropomorphism and the gentle, involving narrative. The dinosaurs you get to meet in the demo range from grumpy to manic by way of obsessive. It's not what you'd call deep characterization but it's idiosyncratic enough to make each of the dinos come across as individuals rather than stereotypes.

Star of the show, other than the eponymous Zid, is Zid's kid, the fresh hatchling he has to conceal in a backpack because the mere sight of such a major predator, even in miniature, would send every other dino into a tailspin. The baby Daspletesaur is there as more than a mcguffin to drive the plot; you get to play him, too.

Oh, sure. He looks cute now...

When the plot requires it, you can swap from playing Zid, who has full use of his paws, complete, it would appear, with opposable thumbs, to the hatchling, who can only pick things up in his mouth. And spit them out. Mechanically, I found this very satisfying. The puzzles were also fairly easy to solve and the solutions felt pleasantly tactile.

The gameplay, then, feels good, the characters are charming, the plot chugs along nicely, the graphics are appealing and you might even learn something. Anything else? Well, there's the world-building, if you can call it that. I did find the hints and clues about how this society of intelligent, articulate, tool-using dinosaurs operates more than a little intriguing. The demo ends with Zid and his infant charge on board a boat taking them from the countryside to a dinosaur center of civilization. I would have liked to stay on that boat with them to see what it was like when they got there.

Before we set off, I have some concerns about the draft...

I guess that means I'm going to wishlist Zid Journey, although if I'm realistic, I'm probably not going to buy it, a prediction that says a lot more about my attitude to spending money than it does about the game. On the basis of what I saw in the demo, it definitely looks worth buying.

And so concludes my skim through Next Fest for February 2023. There were around 900 demos. I played seven of them, which I'm sure gives me some perspective to talk about how good the event was, overall. I'm on safer ground when I say there'll surely be another along in a few months, when I'll enjoy doing it all again.