I highly recommend this game to all those who want to have a more wholesome game and bemoan that so often we can just solve things by violence. In fact, that is one of the main ethical points of the protagonist: he doesn’t want to use violence. The problem is just, the world is ending and a hero is needed. And what is a hero who doesn’t wield a sword and uses that sword? Well, play this game and find out if the protagonist can stay true to their convication or not.
The protagonist is a bard or in fact The Bard, no other name given. Every problem the bard encounters is solved by what the bard can do best: singing. This is represented by you selecting the note for his singing via a radial menu, using either mouse or gamepad stick. The developers managed that this simple mechanic didn’t feel annoying to me over the roughly 10 hours playtime. Instead they reused/recontextualized it in different ways multiple times, so that it doesn’t felt overused. In general this is an easy game without really difficult parts besides some rythm parts. But even then you don’t need to hit the right note by ear, it is shown which note to hit like in other rythm games.
It is sometimes a silly game, but silly in a wholesome way. Where I often couldn’t stop smiling due to the siliness. Like who has ever heard of singing coffee pirates? Or the fact that there is a dedicated dance button, which you can press nearly at all time, making some cutscenes a bit less serious. It feels similar in a way to Night in the Woods regarding the atmosphere and talks between the main characters.
This game is not however for people who want to have action sequences, a realistic graphic or can’t stand some silliness in their games.
Fun fact: King’s Quest I, one of the very first games in the world to use graphics, had puzzles that could be solved in multiple ways. Taking a non-violent approach was the only way to max out your score however. For example, there’s a giant you can kill with a slingshot, or you can tire him out and make him fall asleep for more points.
I wish someone would do a NoClip-esque documentary on Sierra. That studio seems amazing and Roberta Williams was a crazy good game designer.
You might already know about this, but she recently released a 3d remake of Adventure, sometimes considered the first adventure game ever. The remake is called Colossal Cave. I bring it up because the Game Grumps played some of it while Roberta talked with them on air! It’s not a documentary, but there are tons of interesting things she talks about throughout. Look it up on YouTube if you’re interested. 🙂
Link for the lazy - like me. That was amazing + interesting, thank you for the recommendation!
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for digging up the link, too.
Look up OneShortEye on youtube. The main focus is point and click game speedrunning, but a lot of the videos are an in-depth look into the design and history of various games, like this one about Colonel’s Bequest.