Following Freeware – May 2015 releases
Roc’h Arnev Island
Your grandfather, whom you hadn’t seen for a long time, has now passed away so you go to his house on the remote Roc’h Arnev Island to sort out his affairs. You didn’t know your grandfather very well, and while exploring his house and the surrounding neighborhood you soon find out that he’d discovered a great secret that he didn’t dare write about even in his diary. He did note that he talked a lot about it with a friend of his, who then disappeared suddenly in a big storm, leaving a ruined house behind. Your curiosity is piqued, so you travel around the island examining the buildings and other interesting places it offers, talking to its inhabitants to see what you can find out about your grandfather’s secret.
Roc’h Arnev Island, by axoona, is presented in first-person mode in colorful photo slides. As you search the island for clues, you’ll need to visit all six of its lighthouses, a church, a wrecked house and other locations, all of which have been carefully photographed on sunny days with no unwanted shadows. The music consists of a very short section of one of the “Gymnopédias” by Eric Satie, which is repeated over and over throughout the whole game. While a nice piece, the repetition is very annoying when you know the whole score. Luckily you can switch the music off. Because most of Roc’h Arnev Island takes place outside, an ambient background soundscape would have increased the feeling of immersion much more. The few sound effects present are good, although sometimes a bit loud. There are no voices, but sometimes the protagonist’s thoughts appear as text in a box at the bottom of the screen. Spoken text appears in a similar box, as do options of things you can say during conversation.
The game is played entirely using the left mouse button. Hovering the cursor over a hotspot makes it change shape, and clicking then shows you a close-up of the hotspot or takes you to a new location. At the bottom of the screen is a bar containing icons for a map of the island and two hint buttons – one makes all hotspots visible and the other opens a webpage that gives you hints on what to do when you’re stuck. The hints are context-sensitive and almost spoiler-free. This works very well, because you still do most of the work yourself and only get slight nudges in the right direction. There is no inventory so there are no inventory puzzles. The puzzles all revolve around finding out what your grandfather discovered, so you will be comparing lots of symbols, talking to people on the island, and must solve a riddle. You will also learn something about the interesting mixture of pagan and Christian saints, feasts and rituals on the island. Although the puzzles are not very hard, it takes quite a lot of persistence to finish the game. Hotspots are often hard to find, and even with the hints and the hotspot highlighter it is not easy to find all the clues. Fortunately the game auto-saves, so you can stop any time you like and continue later. Roc’h Arnev Island is not a game for beginners, but despite its rough edges, it intrigued me greatly and was a joy to play.
Roc’h Arnev Island can be played online at Kongregate.
Theropods
Once upon a time, dinosaurs and people lived together. Not always very peacefully though. Imagine you’re sitting together with your witch doctor, babbling about nothing after dinner on a quiet night by the fire, when suddenly you are attacked by a ferocious raptor. That is what happens to the red-haired, slender and flexible protagonist of Theropods. Her good doctor manages to lure the dino away, but soon another one of those pesky beasts appears. Now our nameless heroine has to deal with the predator and find out where the doctor went. Luckily she is witty, agile and can kick very hard, all of which are necessary for her to bring this adventure to a successful end.
Theropods was created in two weeks by SeethingSwarm, Valerofond, TinyStuffz, and ZStriefel for 2015’s Adventure Jam. The game is played in third-person mode. The animation, particularly of the characters, is very smooth, and the pixel art is beautifully drawn in bright colors, showing in just four screens the camp fire, a forest with very thick old trees, and a cliff. Everything needed to complete the adventure is clearly visible on screen. However, I found it very hard to recognize what the items actually were. This isn’t helped by the fact that the people (and the dinosaurs) use only a few vocal grunts to communicate, with no text displayed at all, even for hotspots. Our red-haired heroine says “Ng-ng” or “Uh-uh” and shakes her head to indicate that you’ve tried something that she thinks is not possible or useful. Along with some simple and eerie music that reminds me a bit of certain locations in the Myst games, there are also neat sound effects like the breaking of branches and the buzzing of bees.
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