On the Rain-Slick Precipe of Darkness

A mini-review of the demo of the game hereby refered to as OTRSPOD.

OTRSPOD, a game developed by “Hothead Games“http://www.hotheadgames.com/ has as http://www.hotheadgames.com/it’s main drawcard the artwork, writing and characters from the folks at “Penny Arcade“http://penny-arcade.com. Also it is one of the lametably few games that run natively on Linux and Mac (hence my interest).

At it’s core OTRSPOD sits somewhere between the old Sierra point-and-clicks (Sam and Max, Kings Quest and all the rest), but with combat and RPG features similar to the Final Fantasy series. As with most of the adventure/RPG kind of game, story telling and characterisation are often more heavily featured than gameplay itself. Long cutscenes and conversations with in-game characters break up the main action, which consists of moving your character around the nicely rendered 3d landscape and tactical battles. The battles themselves which combine turn based combat with inventory management and action elements. Improved weapons and special moves are unlocked as you progress and find items around the game world

With all this story getting in the way, it’s lucky that it’s somewhat engaging — both visually and in narration. The game is set in New Arcadia, 1922, where you join up with Penny Arcade characters Gabe and Tycho to track down some seriously disturbed (and disturbing) food processing appliances. Between action/adventure sequences you return to the detective agency run by the main characters to review clues, inventory and move to newly opened areas of the map.

The game opens with a character creator, allowing you to customize your name and plenty of options to give yourself and entertaining appearance.

The demo stops just as you join the main characters and start on the case, making it feel little more than a tutorial. This leaves it a bit hard to give the game a high recommendation as without getting into the guts of it I can’t tell whether it will become “point and click tedium” (you know the ones… returning to everywhere in the game 3 times and clicking on any random combination of inventory items to try and progress), or more likely given the feel of the demo an overly linear guided story.

Pros:
– Demented robots/appliances that you shouldn’t let your mother see
– Fantastic graphics, featuring a well done fusion of comic book and 3D (runs smooth as silk on my laptop)
– Humour
– Steampunk setting and story
– Swearing

Cons:
– Demo just doesn’t give you enough feel for what’s to come
– Could be overly linear in plot, with little chance for choosing your own destiny

Bottom line:
I’ll probably drop the US$20 on this, to support their efforts with producing a Linux game released at the same time as the Windows version, and for the promise of it being even half as good as “Sam and Max Hit the Road”. It’s probably a good one to play on the train to and from work, rather than reading a book as normal.

Get it here: http://www.rainslick.com/

Screenies: