PC User Reviews

Could have been a cool puzzle adventure, but the game's weak writing was a critical miscalculation on the part of the developers. Puzzles that require physical interaction are fine, but Mind'o'Matic puzzles require you to read every single data log and email. And, well, the quality of writing just isn't there. If you are going to build logic puzzles around text, you better make sure the player cares enough about the story to actually invest in it. And overall, these datapads are very oddly framed. You'd be lucky to get a datapad with 4-5 logs. Most of them contain 10+ logs, all of which are boring as hell. Not only is the writing dry and uninspired, relying 100% on genre cliches, it's also unrealistic. Like a character spelling out her boyfriend's full name in a log for no reason at all. It immediately breaks the immersion, because I get the impression that it's not really someone's note, but just a piece of information that the game has to feed to the player, and the writers were too lazy to bother to frame it organically. I liked the art. I don't know why they bothered with the faces, because they all look terrible, but the environments look pretty cool, if a little generic. The music is downright bad. With a budget as limited as theirs, they should have gone full synth-electronica. Instead, the composer (or developers) somehow felt the need to use 'live' instruments, and by that I mean cheap stock presets that only a deaf person could mistake for real instruments.

This is a game you can't play unless you are young enough. And even then, not all kids will be able to play it. I'll make it short: That game seems interesting enough, but it's full of text, unavoidable and all in tiny fonts. And of course, in a very unprofessional manner that will make me ignore any product out of their company to avoid a repeat, the developers didn't think of offering any font size options. It's unreadable on a 40 inches monitor. That's a very, very silly way to alienate players.

A very enjoyable point-and-click game, and recommended for any fan of that genre. In gameplay and style, it's like a quality Nancy Drew or Midnight Mysteries game. The makers knew what they wanted, and gave us a good UI (not perfect, has its flaws so -1, but still good), clean graphics, nice music and ambiance, nice environments, very well integrated puzzles, and a story that moves along at a great pace. At the end, you think, that was fun. Not perfect, and the story goes down a path I wasn't so fond of (-1). But the rest more than makes up for it, and the dual ending is good to have too (there's a useful auto-save). Add it to your collection.

Great atmosphere. Fairly original plot & story-telling. Puzzles are logical & fairly creative. GFX are good as is the voice acting. A very solid Sci-Fi adventure game.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

J.U.L.I.A. is a point & click adventure game with a fantastic atmosphere. The style is more in the line of MYST games than the old Lucasarts ones. Said so, I've never been a fan of MYST, and I don't really like the tipology of the puzzles in JULIA... sometimes I didn't even knew what I was trying to do. But nevertheless, apart from some puzzles, I really enjoyed it and couldn't stop playing until I finished it, just to see what was waiting for me next. Its strenght, for me, lies in the storytelling and its powerful "alone in space" theme. The setting and the writing are excellent, the exploration is very interesting, the research and all the details are amazing and the sense of discovery is absolutely fantastic. It's been a great, sometimes poetic, experience and I would recommend it to any adventure gamer.