Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Website: https://www.thetadivision.com/
Price: 14.99 USD
Blurb: “VirtuaVerse is a challenging old school cyberpunk point & click adventure, set in a future not so far away, narrating tales of technomancers, AVR graffiti writers, hacker groups, tribes of cryptoshamans, digital archeology, epic cyberwars, and virtual reality debauchery.“
As many of you may know, I often find games via their soundtracks, not looking for games, but finding them attached to some inspirational sounds. I stumbled across this soundtrack by clicking on a picture of an Amiga loading screen, see and listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSqMC2f-7y8
The composer has a YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEVndLRqBDNcZhBdWo5oepg - that I am sure will not be to everyone’s tastes, but it is a nice (sometimes harsh) synthwave orchestral industrial rock and chiptune fusion? Who cares what genre it falls into, I like it.
Virtuaverse is another one of the games riding the current Cyberpunk wave. Pixel art cyberpunk, mind you. It is one of those titles that adhere more to the original genre, with constant rain, neon everywhere, and Japanese everything else. William Gibson would be proud. Virtuaverse brings this aesthetic or vision of William Gibson to life in a good way.
You are in control of Nathan, a nerd who likes to tinker with things, and you realise has no morals. He wakes up to find his girlfriend gone and decides to go looking for her. (She is a little shady, giving the story a bit more depth). Nathan does not have eye implants to see the virtual reality everyone else sees, he sees the real world - but he has a VR headset (that he breaks in the opening scene), that allows him to do some fancy things. The game is old-skool point-and-click, and involves some moon puzzles and red herrings. You have been warned, it won’t be easy. There are also those tiny hidden items that you may miss, that will come back to bite you in the butt. So if you want to unravel this story, you will need patience… a lot of it too. No really, I rage quit more than once.
The nice part about the puzzles is that they start you off easy. Your first puzzle is to get a cab, but your girlfriend changed the code and the elevator in your apartment only takes you to the next floor. (What? No stairs?). and the puzzle resolves in two screens, unlike later in the game.
Though the music is top notch, there is no voice acting. I would have thought that a game like this would have some. It would definitely have taken it to the next level, but such is life, I suppose? If you are a voice actor, why not offer your services to the developer, then again, nobody reads these. I spent a lot of hours just going back to previous locations and clicking around in this game. You collect items and use those items to solve puzzles, by using them straight up, or by combining them. That said, Nathan’s pockets are bags of holding (a DnD reference if you are confused, look it up), as he carries everything including the kitchen sink! There are also the moon puzzle elements as I mentioned before, things that make zero sense to me on every level.
Graphics-wise the pixel art is well done, other than the main character, who is in a hooded cowl like my character in Loom all those years ago. I understand it is to create mystery, but when he gets out of bed that way, it sort of shatters the illusion. Interiors are well done too, and even moving objects like fire don’t look bad at all. The dialogue in the game is decently written and you will enjoy it. It just needs your full attention as there is no going back or re-reading what characters said, just to be sure you did not miss anything. The branching dialogue gives the NPC’s a bit of depth, other than just giving you clues to solve your puzzles or to get you to the next area. Nathan is also an anti-hero, who will lie, cheat and steal to get his way, which further enhances the story.
It does flop once you find out about his girlfriend. It feels somehow forced. The puzzles are good overall, except for the few moon puzzles that ruined the game for me. If it weren’t for the soundtrack, I would have deleted the game right at the first moon puzzle. I have heard people describing these as “you need to think outside the box”, which is a phrase I hate so much, as people using it have no clue as to what it means, and I am pretty confident I will stab the next one who lays it on me with a screwdriver. To be honest, this game is held aloft by the soundtrack.
Virtuaverse is an incredibly challenging adventure to be sure, and is aimed squarely at point-and-click fans and Cyberpunk fans. If you take into account that with pixel art, everything has to be drawn by hand, you get a new appreciation of the size of the game. Unfortunately, the story does take a dip, not that it was brilliant to start with. You will get a real sense of accomplishment from solving the puzzles though, so if you are dopamine hunting, this one's for you.
For me, voice acting, and the removal of the moon puzzles for logical ones, would justify the $15 price tag, but not like it is. If you can get it on sale and point-and-click is your bag, I say take it. Just get the soundtrack too!