The Journey Down Trilogy

Most puzzles where a bit too much on the easy side (the solution was telegraphed through the dialogue), but everything else was top notch! Superb music, very nice acting, excellent atmosphere, and an epic, adventurous tale. The whole team was loving what they were doing, and it is apparent on the finished product. Maybe the 35 euros is a bit much for its duration, but I got it on a discount, and I didn't regret it. As a matter of fact, I loved it!

First I was astonished what kind of potheads the protagonists were. There were stupid and absolutely irresponsible. I thought that they were high, but then I realized that they are very young. They can't be older than 15 years old. This game makes lots of comedy of their behaviour and is actually one of the better comedy adventures. It reminds me Full throttle and Monkey island games mostly in a good way. Puzzles are good and mostly easy when you learn the game logic. The only annoying puzzle was finding the battery for the truck. It wasn't the car battery, but toy battery. Monkey wrench in Monkey island wasn't funny and this pun wasn't either. The good think is that the game isn't completely linear, so you can solve several puzzles at the same time. The bad think is pricing. 35€ for this? The makers of this game are out of their mind. With that price tag this game should be AAA title and it is not. If you can buy this for 15€ or cheaper it is worth it, otherwise it is not.

"The Journey Down" is an easy puzzle game (did not have to look up a walkthrough once). Its strength lies in the environments, the cool and relaxed afrofuturistic atmosphere and the dialogues with the side characters. The game is not going to challenge your puzzle-solving brain, and the overall story, while serviceable enough, isn't the most original or memorable. Some dialogues have the irritating habit of stating the obvious several times (in the vein of "I have to find the item X so we can advance to do Y", and several minutes later : "I found the item X that I nedded for Y. Let's bring it to character Z so he can use it for Y!", and then again, in dialogue with said character "Hey Z, I found the item X! Let's use it!", etc.) It's the sort of game where the devil (and the value) is in the details : the character designs, the backgrounds, the cool music (reggae, funk, jazz and a little bit or rock), the cute design of a house there, the pastel coloured dreamy clouds over here ...

And i am very picky when it comes to point and click as i do not have the patience to solve riddles if the setting and everything around does not appeal to me. All i want to say is, that part 1 is a bit short and feels more like a demo, while part 2 and 3 are much longer. The game was fun to play, the riddles not too hard and the ending pretty cool. There is humour, action and some darker tone of atmosphere. It was made by a small indie studio and these guys took their time - over 10 years. But this was because they wanted to do it right. And i think they did. Give this a try if you like adventures.

Having completed all three parts, the verdict is out: The Journey Down is a pleasant point-n-click adventure with an African, at times Caribbean, air to it. It is centred around two chaotic guys who, of course, need to rescue the world. The design of the enjoyably childish protagonists is fun. There is a wide variety of locations, and puzzle difficulty is rather easy (albeit at one point funnily counter-intuitive, loved that laundromat sequence for that reason). The soundtrack for this game is outstanding. In addition, I did not find a single severe bug in this game. So much for this entertaining linear game's strengths. The flipside are the abundant inconsistencies in terms of graphics and sounds, both at times stunningly beautiful, at times far from state of the art. You will encounter a sudden change of art style, somewhere in between stop-motion optics and plain cartoon drawings. This will at times disturb the atmosphere. Then there are deficits in the game's speech bits: The volume will vary to quite some degree, which will take you aback, and there are even some improper recording bits. The plot is quite a mixed bag. There are gods in there, (superficial) love stories, there are urban themes, there are pirates, and of course there are evil culprits (or even demons) trying to destroy the world for whatever reason. The character design is utterly flat: There is hardly any space for ambivalence, characters are either good or bad (even though they might change). In terms of culprits, it is the usual »corrupt elites« stuff found everywhere in computer games since decades. As opposed to other adventure games, there are not too many Easter eggs to be found. All in all, it is a good-humoured, entertaining game without too many ambitions besides entertainment. And excellent music. The downsides are the inconsistencies w.r.t. graphics and sounds, which give the game a bit of a cheap touch at times. But in general, the devs put a lot of heart into it. Lovable.