Shardlight review: A pixelated post-apocalypse point-and-click pleasure - griffinthoofearm1963

At a Carom

Expert's Rating

Pros

Slavish devotion to retroactive point-and-clicks
Miniscule details help piddle commonplace setting feel more unique

Cons

Pixel hunt is a chore
A few characters could've utilised more profundity

Our Verdict

Shardlight sure knows how to make the post-apocalypse seem dispiriting, even in a point-and-click.

I've come to love/hatred Wadjet Eye's games over the years. Whether produced in-house or developed by others, the titles put out under the Wadjet Eye banner (Primordia, Blackwell, Gemini Rue, Technobabylon) are unerringly some of the best-typewritten venture games of the Bodoni era…

…And also the most frustrating.

Shardlight is no different. Set in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged first by bombs, then by a mysterious disease known A "Green Lung," Shardlight is as grim as dot-and-clicks come. Within the first x minutes a man asked me to kill him. Things got darker from there.

Soylent Green Lung is people

You play as Amy Wellard, recently infected with Green Lung. As a mechanic, she's skilled enough to qualify for the government's "Lottery Jobs" a.k.a. work so dangerous that only people with nonentity to fall behind would deprivation to volunteer. Doing these jobs earns workers a ticket for the titular lottery though, and the prize for winning? A Green Lung vaccine, which temporarily rids a person of symptoms for a period of about a calendar month.

These vaccines are dutifully metered exterior past the ruling class, the Aristocrats, altogether of which have condemned the names of Roman Emperors—though they dress like Revolutionist War-era soldiers. Faithful their name, they too bouncy quite a a trifle bettor than the poor people in the muddy slums—or should I say the rebels in the muddy slums?

And then in that respect's the Reaper Rage, a faction settled out of the ruins of an old church. You're not allowed to enter the church until you're in order to die, at which point the cult will let you commune with the Reaper—a top-hat wearing swain with a fondness for ravens.

Look. Deal all that backstory. If there's one affair I admire about Wadjet Eye, it's their propensity for edifice interesting worlds atop healthy-worn foundations. Unalterable year's Technobabylon took a smattering of old cyberpunk ideas and turned them into a strong whodunnit. Shardlight takes the post-Revelation—or so atomic number 3 generic a computer game scope atomic number 3 they come—and still manages to reel an interesting story.

It's all in the small details. It's in the way Amy's obsessed with classic cars, or the way a heavy statue of a womanhood towers over the dingy marketplace where she spends most of her time. It's the jump-roping kids singing a nursery rhyme approximately the Harvester, or a train perplexed call at the table salt flats.

It's a game that feels much larger than its actual confines and more imaginative than its setting and straightforward diagram would indicate. It helps that the dialogue is solid—non so much "The style hoi polloi in reality speak up" as "The way people speak in books." It's ill-natured. Recognition likewise goes to the vocalise actor (I imagine it's Wadjet Eye mainstay Abe Goldfarb) for his wheezy and minatory personation of your drawing chore employer Tiberius, aloof under his Authoritative-era wig and pulverised gas mask.

But—and this is a sentiment that stretches back years now—it's hard not to wish Wadjet Oculus would upgrade its tech.

I actually have aught against Shardlight's art in principle. The studio apartment is extraordinarily talented at reproducing a grungy kinda pixelism, an early-to-middle-90s Gabriel Horse-esque style with a great deal of retro charm. Shardlight makes the most of it, breaking up its browned world with splashes of toxic greens and reds. It's weirdly beautiful.

Wadjet Eye built its reputation on the back of Adventure Game Studio (AGS), though—an railway locomotive suited for…well, fundamentally the types of games Wadjet Optic makes. Small-to-sensitive-sized adventure games with a lo-fi aesthetic. So far, so good.

The problem: Wadjet Heart is bumping up against the limitations of AGS, and this becomes clearer with all new release. The art gets better, the voicework gets better, but the games are still cragfast with clumsy interfaces and awkward "action sequences" (thankfully few of them in Shardlight) and a dialogue system that seems not solely up to the task of manipulation the complexity of Wadjet Eye's stories.

And this is before we even don the problems with AGS as a platform. In that respect's zero resolution options, significance the game runs at a baffling 1280×800 with some sweet black parallel bars happening the side. In that location's likewise no way to bear witness all hotspots on a screen and avoid the take for picture element-scouring.

This last item is especially galling because it's the source of most frustrations in Shardlight. The art and puzzles are both superb at walking you through puzzles intuitively, for the most part. Occasionally you're going to misfire an aim, however, and you'll have no refuge but to walk through and through each available screen and mouse over anything that looks even up remotely momentous.

Maybe Wadjet Eye considers this character of the genre's retro appeal, simply personally I'm non a fan—and I've only become more spoiled in the past few eld, donated that Wadjet Eye's closest competitors in this place (Geographic area and Daedalic) always give you the option of revealing hot spots. The puzzles are the game. Non the picture element-hunting.

Again, I have a love/hate relationship with Wadjet Eye. Their games are great, but also difficult to generally recommend given how many another modern music genre conveniences they (willingly or unwillingly) shun.

Rear line

Shardlight is bad damned decent though. The write up's a bit more aboveboard than some other Wadjet Eye games, it ends a little too abruptly, and few of the incidental characters required fleshing out, but each-in-completely it makes for an engaging six or seven hours in a human race with some great ideas—a bit like Dead Synchronicity, except with an end. Real grim. Really adult.

I just wish Wadjet Eye's tech matched its talents.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/419971/shardlight-review-a-pixelated-post-apocalypse-point-and-click-pleasure.html

Posted by: griffinthoofearm1963.blogspot.com