Following Freeware – March 2015 releases
Willem’s Winners
A Matter of Caos: Episodes 1 and 2
Mr. Gilbert, the protagonist in A Matter of Caos
by Italian developer ExperaGameStudio, finds himself in exactly the same situation as so many private detectives who came before him. Poor, lonesome PI with money problems: check. Dark, forbidding city filled with Really Nasty People: check. Rich mysterious dame comes in with a job for you: check. Job requires searching for a missing person: check. The story is typical too: Gilbert gets a minimum of information about the girl his mysterious rich benefactor, Miss Malaguard, hires him to find. All he has is a picture, a name (Daphne) and the tip that she works as a waitress at the Trembling Stars. As clichéd as this premise might seem, however, Mr. Gilbert is not your average detective. He looks very much like an octopus: purple-colored and with tentacles for hands or feet. Gilbert is not the only strange creature in this adventure either. You will also meet a hellteeth (a dangerous dragon-like creature) and a very freaky and dangerous dog, amongst others.
The nameless dark city setting is presented in static pseudo-first-person pixel art, drawn in shades of grey as befits its obvious noir influences. In his search for Daphne, Gilbert will visit a half-friendly bouncer in front of a shady pub, a rich man in his posh house, a sneaky and dangerous lawyer in a casino, and many more interesting places and characters, some of whom try to kill him, while others help him for their own reasons (they couldn’t care less about Gilbert). Short hotspot descriptions appear in a translucent bar at the top of the screen, while dialogues and longer descriptions of items are displayed in a large overlay in the middle. During dialogue you can often choose your line from multiple options displayed on the screen. Conversations are accompanied by a portrait of the person speaking. There is no voice acting. However, there are some very neat sound effects, which enhance the atmosphere of the game greatly. Ominous music, the tune of which depends on the location, is played throughout the game.
There isn’t much visual detail in most screens, often not even depicting all the objects you can manipulate. In Episode 1, a column positioned to the right of the viewable area shows a list of the things Gilbert can see, including things that you cannot. In Episode 2, the column is replaced by colorful icons placed over the appropriate locations in the environment. Clicking the items listed in the column (Ep. 1) or the icons directly (Ep. 2) with the left mouse button takes Gilbert to new locations, provides a description of the object or person, or places the item in his inventory, located at the bottom of the screen. Inventory items are brightly colored in both episodes, and an icon allows you to examine them in more detail. Whenever Gilbert writes something in his notebook, a big red exclamation mark flashes over it until you click on it. In the top right is an icon that gives access to Gilbert’s thoughts, which sometimes helps to solve puzzles.
A Matter of Caos contains an eclectic mix of dialogue and inventory puzzles. Your life often depends on what you say to whom, so be careful. Of course, in a city like Gilbert’s, you will also have to outwit or slay the occasional monster. This means you will die often, but right after death the game lets you try again so it is not really a problem. Gilbert has special powers, used automatically, with which he can mellow people’s minds and make them tell more than they intend. They don’t always work well enough, however, so sometimes Gilbert has to resort to other ways of persuading people. Having no hands and legs, however, complicates matters in that regard. Apart from Gilbert’s interesting powers and shortcomings, A Matter of Caos is a pretty standard detective story. But it is quite long and complicated, and very well worked out. The story unfolds logically and the puzzles are very well integrated and don’t hold up progress unfairly.
This game is not suitable for young children, as it deals with prostitution, murder, horror and the occult. The characters you meet all have their own peculiarities and backgrounds, and you get to know many of them better as the game progresses. You have to play Episode 1 in one go, but you can save your game in Episode 2 in a single save slot. The second episode picks up exactly where the first stops, but if you take a break between them you can view a recap before you continue. So far, A Matter of Caos is proving to be a good, solid adventure series which you will enjoy for quite a few hours. The story is clearly not over yet (actually it looks like it’s just beginning), so I’m waiting eagerly for Episode 3.
Both Episode 1 and Episode 2 of A Matter of Caos can be played online at Kongregate.
Our Personal Space
Life on earth is getting a bit boring for young Jack, so he takes his new wife Kelly to the Earth-like planet of Talaam, where a new colony is being started. Jack is a farmer, so he will be taking care of the food production there. Our Personal Space, by Metasepia Games, takes you through 25 Talaamian months with the couple. Life on a barren planet is not easy for the newlyweds, who feel like the pioneers who conquered the American West in the 1800s. They have to cope with a lack of resources, broken equipment, the usual quarrels and irregularities within the community, deaths and many more problems, hazards and annoyances.
Our Personal Space is an interactive story complemented by pictures and sounds. The characters that are important to the scene are shown in a rather cartoony style over the top of vivid watercolor background paintings. The contrast in styles makes for a strange blend, as does the depiction of seemingly old-fashioned things in a futuristic sci-fi story. For instance, the stove Kelly and Jack use is supposedly a modern electricity/biomass hybrid unit but looks more like a stove from the 1800s. The discrepancy doesn’t really matter though, because the story focuses mainly on the social implications that living in a small colony on a faraway planet have on the couple. The story is told via text in a black oblong box at the bottom of the screen. The background music consists of several piano tunes, and sometimes when appropriate the sound of wind, a waterfall or machinery running can be heard. All sounds are very clear and of good quality.
You play as Kelly, and often you will be presented with choices of what to say or do. The options you can choose from are displayed in the middle of the screen, and the story is mainly determined by your decisions. The number of choices you have to make is incredible. The game starts with a long introduction about how Kelly and Jack get married and move to Talaam. Here you can choose whether Kelly really feels like going with Jack or only does it to stay with him, what kind of job Kelly has on Earth, whether they will have a baby or not. You can even change the couple’s default names if you wish. After the introduction, you are more or less settled on Talaam, and now have to wait two years for the next supply ship to arrive. In the meantime, you have to help to make the colony prosperous. This is where the game really begins. Every month Kelly has to decide what she will do and how she will spend her free time. She can work on one of no less than eight different skills like technological, domestic or physical skills every month, decide to focus on work or take it easy, and whether or not to spend her free time alone. These choices are presented on a screen showing Kelly’s datapad at the beginning of every month. You can also read the colony message board there, listen to several tracks of music, and check out the status of Kelly and Jack’s relationship.
After making all your choices the month starts, where you are forced to deal with more choices! Everything you decide has a profound impact on how the story goes and how Kelly and Jack’s relationship develops. It even influences the way the characters appear on the screen. A choice can make them happy or sad or even make them walk away entirely. It’s incredible how many things Kelly can do and say that influence the story. For instance, the job you choose for Kelly when she’s still on Earth, and the things she will specialize in on Talaam can be very helpful for the community. But you could also make her a lazy bum and focus on nothing particular the whole time. You can make her and Jack’s life incredible as easily as you can make it miserable, just by making the appropriate choices. Our Personal Space really can be just what you want it to be. Replaying the game can become repetitive and a bit boring, because you have to decide what Kelly will focus on 25 different times. But because the emergent stories are so rich and detailed, and often new things are uncovered, it was hard for me to stop playing. Luckily, every time you quit the game it auto saves, so you can easily continue later. Thanks to the incredible amount of influence you can have over the story without ever skipping a beat, Our Personal Space is a high quality interactive story that is worth a long look.
Our Personal Space can be downloaded from MetaSepia’s website.
The Terrible Old Man
Three criminals enter a small coastal town’s candle-lit tavern. They are new here, but they soon find out about a weird but very rich mad old man who lives near the seashore and pays everything in gold doubloons. That sounds promising, so the trio conceives of a cunning plan to overpower the old man and take his gold. However, things end up going a lot differently than they planned…
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