A Golden Wake

Structually this game has much of what you'd expect from a traditional point and click. The interface is similat to oth3er recent adventure games (such as Resonance or Primordia by the same publisher). You point and click to look and interact and have object or conversation based puzzles to advance the plot. The puzzles are a touch on the easy side but it will still take around 6 hours of gameplay time to finish. The game authors have gone out of their way to create something that reflects the atmosphere of the time. The script and music are well written and the voice acting is very good. Several prominent figures of the 20s are NPCs in the story. Sadly the plot of the game was just too mundane for me to truly enjoy it. It is a fictional biography of someone who really never achieves anything special. About three quarters of the way through you think that a plot might develop and then it quickly fizzles out. In short, if you like point and click adventures and the plot isn't your main motivation, this game is perfectly adequate. If you are the type that hangs on for the next revelation in a story, perhaps leave it until you're properly bored and lacking other options.

All the other WadjetEye games I played - Primordia, Resonance, The Blackwell series - were really, really great and set my expectations high. Unfortunatelly, A golden wake disappointed me. There's nice voice acting, nice settings, but the story is just dull and mundane. Maybe if I felt more connection to the historical setting it would have been different.

Don't want to bore you with describing what it's about, you can read that in the desription or other reviews. Art and music for this one are good. Not great, but good. The story is interesting due to its setting, but to be honest, there isn't really anything remarkable otherwise, takes the exact route you'd expect with little to no surprises. Which isn't a bad thing per se as it's still interesting to follow and told rather well. I liked that it gives you the opportunity to make a few decisions that won't really change much about how the story progresses, but they still form the protagonist. The other half of the medal, the gameplay, is a mixed bag. The few minigames and persuasion quizzes are fine and fun, but you will spend the most time clicking through dialogues or solving puzzles. (Including dialogue puzzles.) Problem is, not only are they all extremely easy but you also wouldn't have much other options than what is required to solve them even if you wouldn't figure them out in an instant, because there are always only a few things to use or interact with, rarely requiring you to leave the screen for a puzzle. One might argue this, at least, prevents you from getting stuck too long and true, it's still worth it for enjoying the story and the game's atmosphere, but with just a bit more effort in the puzzles section, this game would've been a 5 stars game for me.

'A Golden Wake' is the latest entry in the excellent portfolio of Wadjet Eye Games. You play Alfie Banks, a real estate agent , who, after some monkey business with his former employer, decides to get himself a piece of the action in the real estate boom in Florida, during the Roaring Twenties. Having majored in Recent History myself, I immensely enjoy games such as this, which allow you to experience to a certain degree living in these times. From the language (Horsefeathers) to the details (Fatty Walsh, anyone?), 'A Golden Wake' really makes you feel the Zeitgeist, the idea of getting rich overnight by selling land, the world being on the brink of progress. If you aren't a historian but enjoy things like 'The Great Gatsby', 'Glengarry Glen Ross' or 'L. A Noire', this game might also be worth checking out at least. Like 'L. A. Noire', A Golden Wake has a certain gimmick, in this case persuasion puzzles. At times during the story you have to convince people of something. You can, but don't have to, scan them with your Seller Intuition, which gives you a small insight into their personality and allows you to choose your arguments accordingly. Sure, the AGS graphics can't hold a candle to modern graphics, but that doesn't matter. It actually enhances the feeling of historical importance which permeates the game. TL; DR: If you like mafia flicks or games, check this one out.