Jim86

Put simply, Goodbye Deponia completes one of the best adventure trilogies we've seen in years. Voice acting is good, the art is pretty and consistent. You meet a TON of characters (and ruin all their lives in the process). Put simply if you are in anyway a fan of adventure games this is a must play. If I can give you one hint to solving the puzzles though, it is to pretend you are the worst human being in existence. If you can do this then all the puzzles make sense. Probably the biggest detraction from the game is the main character, Rufus. Rufus is just UNLIKEABLE. Through out the series, you keep hoping that some where along the line he'd mature a bit and think of others, but no. Only at the end do we get anything close to this. He is so awful, that for me some puzzle were insolvable because I couldn't get into the mindset of doing something so horrible to progress. But keep in mind this is more of a satire on how old adventure games had you do bad things and you would still be the hero. Here there no question that nobody thinks that Rufus is a hero. In the end, if you're interested in irreverent (offensive) comedy, a good story and a strong adventure game, then the Deponia series is an excellent place to look.

I have to disagree with a lot of these other reviewers. With the exception that the art is wonderful, there's just not much to love. At first glance you might want to call the graphics retro, but they aren't. The game is heavily stylized with vector like graphics. Retro-like graphics applies more to games like Sword and Sorcery, Minecraft, or Fez. I was really ready to get into this, just the art would have been enough to hook me. However, now that I have actually played it, there is only 5 or 6 places you can go and look at. Even worse, you can't really explore, the path you take is rigid and uninviting. Two scenes you literally just stand there and stare (the airplane and the car accident). The other scenes are a gas station, a house, and a mine. There is no where else to go but these places. The gas station you can go into the basement, the house you can walk into, the mine has 3 tunnels, but only 1 tunnel has anything particularly interesting in it (creepy music). So with that in mind the graphics just are not much to speak of when they give you so little. I was almost ready to praise the over view map, but it disappointed me too. It is black and white and is the most retro looking thing in the game. At first I thought it would provide a nonlinear play through but when I went to places the game didn't tell me to go, the game would lock in way that looked like it was still working. Certain events weren't triggering and that caused the game to just freeze with inescapable animation running. This happened 8 times! The first few lock ups I was trying to explore, but after that I gave up and stuck to the course. But it still locked up even when I wasn't trying too hard. At one point I restarted the game, looked at the dog, and clicked on my truck and it locked up. There is a problem when you need to restart twice in less than a minute. Another issue is the fact that certain places are pure text adventure. It just seems kind of lazy to fall back on this. The game is designed so rigidly that it plays like a text adventure despite the graphics, which gives you that retro feel to it, but only half the scenes are fully modeled the rest are text. You can go to a bait shop, a museum, and a church but it just plays through text. More over, the creepiest things happen at these places. This just makes an incomplete game feel even more incomplete. The pace was also a pain. For a game that's an hour and a half long, you would think the padding would be at a minimum but no. Moving around is slow. It takes a while to walk anywhere, and driving requires moving through winding roads and is also slow. At one point you ride a rail cart and guess what, it's slow. The house you need to visit has a zigzag path for no apparent reason other than to make you click a few more times and wait. You would think the lethargic pace up to this point would be enough, but your character twists his ankle and has to drag his foot in a now completely apathetic pace. The game has about 15 minutes of content and 75 minutes of waddling to your destination. The other reviewers seem to find everything creepy. But the story is so short it hardly gave me a chance to be creeped out. There's just not much here. I could spoil every detail in the game in about four sentences. The amount of plot that takes place in the game would barely cover a post it note. You find out about the history of a mine, you find out about the past and problems of two sisters, and you find out the old job of some guy you meet. THAT IS IT. That's the plot. The creepy parts come in with some ghostly things happening and the background audio. But it's all so thinly veiled, I was expecting creepier things to come later, but they never did. If you are looking for creepy, play Year Walk. The sense of mystery is also non-exist, likely caused by the lack of motivation. You play as a delivery man that's out in the middle of no where looking for a non-existent address. Your character is told to go to another house to get directions. But the directions aren't quite right, so you explore a mine. Then you go to a bait shop, you wonder around for a bit, back to the gas station, then back to the house. Why you did any of this makes no sense. The game seems like it is aiming for a Twin Peaks style, but falls extremely short. If the game wasn't segmented into tiny parts I might of been able to find something I liked. So there is a few take aways from this review. Don't approach Kentucky Route Zero like a game, it's more of a book that can crash if you don't turn to the right page. Second, be prepared for an extremely short game, shorter than portal, shorter than the Stanley Parable, shorter than Mario Bros when you take that warp pipe to world 8. It's short. Finally, for the most enjoyable experience, just watch a video of someone else playing, because, as some one who has already played it, the player will only get in the way of the story development.

Massive step up from the previous game. The original had you running around an enormous building no idea if one thing or another pertains to your task, let alone what your task was. This time the clues are better the area is concise and the logic makes more sense (for an adventure game). On top of that the quality art, audio, and design is improved. Through the entire game play I had only one bug where the dialog muted, which was easily fixed in the settings. The story is also improved, it's the continuation of one of the endings from the previous game. The humor is darker but is has a levity about it that makes it more enjoyable. The endings were interesting but they sadly rob some of the value in what you were doing. It makes it seem like everything that happened did not have to happen. Still though this sequel is much better than the original, you may just want to skip the original all together.

This is one of those games you hate to review badly but sadly I must. I will say this though, the art is gorgeous and its very clear that tremendous amount of attention went to making the game look good. The game is much like Machinarium in that it has no dialogue, the art is great, and similar has game play, but it's just not executed as well. Lily is setup so that each screen is it's own little adventure game with very little interaction between scenes. This causes the puzzles to feel episodic and filler like. The developer could dropped more scenes anywhere in the game without disrupting the story or game play. It was interesting design choice, and I will credit the experimental attempt but it just doesn't feel like your accomplishing anything. My biggest criticism comes from the fact that the game feels shorter than it is due to the fact that you get almost no story and the early levels are extremely easy. With about 10 scene in the game, all plot is concentrated in the first and last scene. Beyond that you can't deduce much of whats going on in the world other than it's post apocalyptic. Finally, the ending is an extremely unsatisfying cliff hanger. I was left with a feeling that the characters were better off if I had never played the game. Despite this, I still say the developers deserves their due. The effort is clearly visible in the wonderful art and environment that was created even if the game design didn't pan out so well. Interestingly, enough I think a big part of my criticism would go away if narration was added to make the game more story book like. The game certainly looks like a story book but didn't really seem like it committed to it.

Not the best adventure game you can play. The story becomes pretty obvious early on in the game spoiling the feeling discovery with the feeling of waiting for the reveal. Overall the graphics leave a lot to be desired. There's nearly no animation with exception of Edna walking around the screen. While I can see what the artist was trying for, it still looks like a low budget early 80s cartoon with even worse voice acting. Further, the loading between scene changes is unbearable. But that's really just to start, the game play is long and drawn out. After you escape the initial area, you have a huge multistory complex to navigate. I spent a good amount of time going back and forth trying to figure where I was suppose to be looking for that subtle change in dialog. And on top of everything else things where extremely spaced out and you were forced to pace through one are with an unskippable cut scene to reach different areas. The worst of it though was bugs. On about 5 occasions certain parts of the game froze or became impassable. The first time I neglected to save, there is no auto save, so I ended up having to replay a large portion of the game. Overall, the game was okay, but there is just not a lot to love about the game.