ENCODYA

I wish I could say Encodya was great. It's pretty decent, enough for me to play through its entirety, but it has messy puzzles, terrible inventory management, and an unfocused narrative. The main characters are not distinct enough to be worth switching perspectives (often, if you look at something with Tina, SAM will offer - if not the same - very similar banter); the characters you encounter across the world are boxy and cartoonish in a bad way. It's clearly attempting to imitate the characterization and humor of Lucasarts games, but the Encodya team unfortunately do not have the writing chops to pull it off - I think I chuckled once throughout the entire game. The narrative is dispersed, with puzzles that solely feel like fetch quests, and whose thematic connections are loose at best, nonsensical at worst. Some of them vaguely make sense between each other, but for the most part, while simple enough, sometimes do fall into the infamous "adventure game puzzle logic", particularly in the last 2 or so parts of the game. Which leads me to the world-building: it's barebones, with a Berlin that feels like it could be anywhere in a cyberpunk setting - if you'd called it Neo Paris or Neo Chicago it would've mattered little. The game promises a grand "save the world" narrative and questions about public and private social engineering, and it flatly delivers on it, to the most boring results. There's no food for thought here, just a bunch of platitudes about the effects of the internet. Yes, if only we thought of trees every once in a while, the world would be different. I guess. Mechanically, it's also a mess. There's no "always run option" and the characters move very slowly; the 3D/2D geometry makes perspective tricky to navigate; the camera is positioned very badly a lot of times (SAM blocks stuff from view often); inventory is terrible; some scenes have nothing in them. Again, I wish I could say this was better. Hopefully next time!

Great story, interactions and navigation is a bit slow, but the game looks amazing.

I bought this on Hyper sale and I could not take the randomness with no real story that you care about, It just plain tired me out with tedium

This game feels like a nostalgic trip back to the golden era of point-and-click adventures. The puzzles are clever and satisfying, evoking the same sense of discovery I remember from late 90’s and early 2000’s classics on PC. The story is very well thought out, with layers that pull you in deeper the longer you play, and the voice acting adds so much personality, it really brings the world to life. I especially love the cyberpunk atmosphere, it’s immersive and stylish, making it easy to get lost in for hours at a time. For anyone who grew up on classic puzzle games but craves a modern twist, this is an experience worth diving into. That said, I do wish there were a few more distinct hints sprinkled throughout, since I’ll admit I’m not the best at puzzle games this challenging. The crafting system also took some getting used to, I wasn’t always sure what items could combine with what at first. Still, once I got the hang of it, the experience was absolutely worth it.

Truly Amazing Game, A Super 5 star hit. =),