Gemini Rue

Gemini Rue is not perfect but it is absolutely worth playing. It's graphically similar to Gabriel Knight or the original Monkey Island games but its story is surprisingly mature and engrossing. It features well implemented, classic adventure style gameplay but it is a bit on the short side (about 8 hours) and the limited budget is noticeable in the small number of locations you'll visit. The story, atmosphere, voice acting, and the ending completely make up for those short comings. Highly recommended to those who enjoy this type of game.

This adventure game fell short of my expectations quite a bit -- I forced myself to finish it, hoping it would get better, but the ending was as bland as the rest. Writing: Very stilted and hacky, and the plot suffers because of it. Voice acting: Absolutely BAD. The voice of Sayuri is the best voice in the game, but even her performance seemed extremely constrained by the lame lines and tone-deaf dialogue. The Director's voice actor somehow managed to always have the exact wrong inflection for the delivery of his lines, and Azriel's voice actor delivered every line practically the same. Kane's voice actor sounded more like a first read-through of the script by an assistant or something -- actually, just about all the other voice actors were about that level too. Puzzles: Not clever. In fact, it's more of a collect-all-the-things-and-use-them-50-times game. The game dialogue is either uninformative or downright misleading at times as to the next steps to take. Combat: Shooting mechanic was both tedious and boring. Controls: Maddening! Never had to put so much effort into switching between look/touch/talk/item/etc. Awful basic mechanic that irked me as soon as the game started. All in all, I have played worse games, and I give them credit for making an old-school adventure game, and the bones of the plot were solid -- however, the severely flawed execution of every other critical part of the game means I definitely could not recommend it.

First the good - the story was interesting enough to propel me through the game. The atmosphere of the world is perfect - rather bleak though. I found the control scheme a bit annoying though - right click on the object to interact with and then choose the interaction from a pop-up. I also found it difficult to identify items on the screen, turning it into bit of a pixel hunt at times. I also thought the ending was a bit weak. I'd recommend their previous games ahead of this, or even the Daedalic ones.

The backgrounds are very sketchy and you often cannot tell what any particular thing is, especially in the more futuristic-looking rooms. The characters will get anti-aliased at weird times, as opposed to just when they're far away, making them look very blurry. Overall the whole thing looks kind of ugly but also has a bit of a gritty sci-fi aesthetic. It does have a very engaging and interesting story, though, even if there isn't a ton going on in the puzzle department

As someone already mentioned, had this not been made by an indie-developer, it would not have gotten nearly as much praise. The game starts of well enough with the beautiful rainy scene and atmospheric music and sounds, and the pixel art is really engaging to me, personally, and I felt quite drawn in. But here´s where I felt I was being lead on: you just keep returning to the same 3 backgrounds in the rainy streets. Obviously with the indie-constraints they weren't going to make a new across-the-globe-romp, like 'Fate of Atlantis', but I was hoping to see at least a couple of interesting spots on the planet. It just feels like the artists drew the space-station and the city backdrops and then went "alright, that´s yer lot, everything has to play out in these two settings", and that´s what they did. I was a bit disappointed because I thought there would be more to explore. It also doesn't help that the game is so linear (okay, maybe a snobbish complaint for a point-and-click adventure game).