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Website: https://www.piritastudio.com/
Price: 19 USD GOG / STEAM
Blurb: “MUTROPOLIS is a lovely sci-fi adventure set on the abandoned Planet Earth. Play as Henry Dijon (hero, nerd, detective) in search of a legendary lost city. Uncover weird ancient artifacts.(sic) And PLEASE don’t get obliterated by an ageless evil. You’ve been warned.”
If you are an Indie-game fan, this is for you. (The double entendre was intentional, as the first lot of Indiana Jones games were point and click too).
Does this game have it all, even Grumpy Cat? Let’s find out.
The game is broken into acts, and the first act has you searching for your trowel to open a door. But who are you? You are Henry Dijon, an archaeologist from the future. Here to do what? Find something that is pre-cataclysm. So what about the puzzles? Well, the goals seem to be well defined. The execution not so much. I admit, I stumbled around until I accidentally clicked on some footprints in the dirt that were barely visible. When previews and press releases mention Monkey Island in the same breath as this game, I want you to ignore it. Your expectations will be too high and you will not like the game. I need you to rather think Deponia.
I installed the GOG version of the game and it installed and ran without problems. Tested on my potato laptop, it made the fan spin, but barely.
The story is not earth shattering, but it is like a cosy mystery book rather. Familiar and safe. There are times when it will put a smile on your dial, but you will not laugh out loud.
The gameplay is familiar too, you are set a problem and with one tool to start with to work your way to the next sub-problem, hidden somewhere in the image in front of you. Thankfully none of the riddles or puzzles reach logic so far removed from reality that it only makes sense in the fifth dimension. They all make sense, and are not so well hidden that only a one-pixel perfect click will unlock either.
There is a lot said about the graphics in the game, but with long red diamonds for noses, the characters look drunk to me. The way they walk, they are definitely drunk. (Since they are from Mars, the long limbs are a given.) Yet somehow the game also reminds me of Broken Age. I also fail to find the Monkey Island humour; again, it would be just below Deponia.
Since the artwork is hand drawn by an Indie developer, it gets a pass, but it does not add anything to the game. The audio is a bit of a letdown. The voice acting feels a bit sub-par. Instead of Henry being a funny jovial character looking for his trowel, he comes across as a bit of a nag. I am going to assume the developers did it themselves during lockdown, so this too gets a pass. The music could have been left out too as it brings nothing to the game. (I don’t know if it is just me, but the game feels bland). I was really looking forward to this.
The game isn’t a long one, the time you take on the puzzles is what will determine the play through for you. As I mentioned before, they are logical and you should get them, even if you just randomly try to combine components. I randomly tried a mushroom with the hole, and it turned out it was a glowing mushroom that lit the hole. Fair enough.
The game also needs a bit more character development. Too much stereotyping. The nerdy archaeologist, the dof blonde, the Goth bettie with an attitude problem and the scatterbrained professor. You need charming characters, or taking them to the extreme like Hoagie and Laverne in Day of the Tentacle. The world did also not feel like a world abandoned for three millennia either. The few glimpses we are given just sort of hints at it. I don’t know about you, but I need immersion. I want to believe! I mean, the professor is kidnapped, the graffiti is kidnapped! Where is the danger, the drama or the mystery?
At the end of the day, this is a middle-of-the-road adventure game. I could say bordering on boring. I mean, I never even saw Grumpy cat again. That alone gave me hope that the game would be a fun one, albeit with dry humour.
There is an overhead map of sorts, but it is more of a cut scene.
As an Indie game, it gets a pass on most of the important stuff we would normally judge a game by, but, like Luke Skywalker as a Stormtrooper, I thought it would have been bigger.
If you are bored and have nothing better to do, give this a go. Just wait for it to go on sale though. If you are looking for a better experience and you have not played Deponia or Broken Age, I suggest you get that rather.