Posted on: December 26, 2023
Wottie
Verified ownerGames: 1333 Reviews: 26
Jungle adventure with a message
Your reaction to Sumatra: Fate of Yandi will probably be driven by two factors: whether you like point and click adventures, and what's your view of gaming. If you love gaming for the sheer escapism, living in different worlds, and heroic deeds, give Sumatra a wide berth. If you think that just like any other work of art, games should (at least occasionally) reflect the world around us, then it might be the right game for you, as it has a strong environmental message. Yandi and Ramdan, two fellow workers and best friends, are sent to haul some logs to the factory. Following a landslide and some hours of unconsciousness on a log floating down a river, Yandi finds himself in the middle of a rainforest and has to save himself, find Ramdan, and discover something evil and something magnificent in the process. Point and click equals pixel art. Here it's done right. Though blocky, the graphics have a unique and consistent feel - and once you accept the artistic concept, they're pretty immersive. The audio is mostly silence or ambient sounds, to make the key scenes of the game when music kicks in stand out more. And I didn't encounter a single bug. Difficulty-wise, it's on the easy side. It wants to deliver the message, and so it wants you to win. It doesn't flood your inventory, and most of the puzzles are easy, with just a few medium ones thrown in. It might be used to introduce a friend to the genre or playing together with your kids. The story gets the better the closer you're getting to its end. Initially, the game pushes its message too hard. I often thought, "Yawn, I know what you're trying to say, can we move on, please?" For a while, I even thought of abandoning it. But once you complete the first act with the natives, it took off. Towards the end I was really drawn into the plot, and the (though predictable) ending had me "Yesss!"-ing. Sumatra definitely isn't a game for everyone. I'm not even sure whether it's a game for me, but I'm glad I gave it a chance.
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