Irony Curtain: From Matryoshka with Love

Fun little game, its best parts are the voice acting and the art, really well done on both. The characters are also interesting. Lots of effort on those points. It has a helpful hints system which (from what I used) does a good job helping you through the puzzles without giving too much away. One downside is that it is a bit buggy, but looks like they are fixing those quickly. I think the storyline could be somewhat triggering. The game does a great job finding humor and silliness in an otherwise bleak and depressing topic.

Clever game. Rises above an inventory item puzzle game by making you thing creatively about how to create some of the inventory items instead of getting it from a character. I am sure the topic is a bit off putting to some but I found it refreshing and enjoyed a lot of the references. Would recommend if you like good, well made point&click games. Art was good, voice acting well done, no annoying interace issues. Recommend!

What I loved most about this game (apart from the beautiful hand-drawn art) was the fact that the developers actually managed to hit the sweet spot between easy and frustrating. The story could have been better and some of the humour felt rather cheesy, nevertheless, I just wanted to know what happens next - and I was able to finish the game without walkthrough (except for about 3 occasions where I just got lazy) in something between 10 to 15 hours. I did use the in-game hint system a few times (even though I always tried to make it a last resort measure) and I was really glad it was there as a step between figuring out everything yourself and checking the walkthrough (most of hints I used still didn't give you the complete solution to a puzzle). Also, having a chance to highlight usable objects with the spacebar was great - don't know about you but I've never enjoyed getting stuck in an adventure game just because it wasn't obvious what you can actually click on. Overall, Irony Curtain had just the right pace for me, feeling like progressing most of the time and giving me sense of acomplishment upon finishing it. Also, I appreciated that the main protagonist (while naive and foolish) wasn't a complete jerk just for the sake of being a jerk, like Rufus from Deponia. On a side note, it was a little weird (and sometimes outright chilling) experience to play this game these days, mere few weeks after Russia started their invasion into Ukraine. It almost felt masochistic and twisted to play it at such a time, especially living in Czechia (just 400 km from the ongoing war, with our country having its share of Russian oppresion in the past). Then again, I guess it is true that Czech people often use (even dark) humour to cope with hard times, as I kind of did with this game... #StandWithUkraine

A fun little romp. The plot gets very silly towards the end, but it's all in good fun. The gameplay is smooth. The humor is enjoyable. The backgrounds are detailed. Most of the puzzles are straightforward although there are a few head-scratchers.

This is rather classical point and click adventure, but with the modern touch of nice graphics, hotspot system and in game help. The setting is quite unique, the story is ok (idealist communist from western country gets confronted with actually existing socialism). Game is not very long but still offers some hours of gameplay. Artwork comes with a lot of love for details, but story and characters are a bit flat. The game is meant to be funny, but the humor works only in some moments. Puzzles are well done, not too easy, but also not too difficult nor too hilarious. Genre veterans won't have any trouble. Minigames are decent, too, personally, I don't like minigames in adventure games, in particular not if they are based on speed/reaction. Lots of references to other adventure games. For a genre fan and in particular when on discount I'd recommend this game. Play it in english. And yes, this game is a satirical comment on real socialism. If you're such a huge fan of Stalin style government that you can't enjoy someone making fun of some of its flaws, this might not be the game for you.