VirtuaVerse

Review written after playing story mode and consulting a walkthrough few times. The story rolls fast, and it rolls BIG. It's quite easy to get attached, even if Nathan, our hero, makes some "questionable" decisions. The day starts with "where has my girlfriend gone?", and soon the stream of events drags Nathan deep into troubles. Music and graphics are just right. It's a shame the game doesn't contain any voiceover. Occasional background noise, TV static and dial-up sound (yea, kids, the Internet used to come over the phone line. 90s were wild) alone won't cut it. Most of the puzzles in story mode are quite logical, but since I consulted walkthrough for the full thing, I can't really imagine what went through the designers' heads when they were writing the story. I feel like the "hard" puzzles are just slapped on top of the thing just because, with connection to the story being negligible, if any. The game contains considerable number of references to what'd be the IT equivalent to paleontology: 8-bit era, 3.5 floppies and CRT screens. I enjoyed every single of them, but I can imagine other (younger?) players being lost and/or disinterested in them. If that's the case, subtract half a star from this review. And I'm still very upset of what the game tried to sell as QR codes. Come on, you could at least try... Given the Atari references, you know your target demographics is nerds. Nerds, who tend to get upset by this kind of stuff, perhaps?

A very stylish cyberpunk adventure with a depressing yet hopeful dystopian setting where everyone is a slave to technology in one way or another. The whole aesthetic is great – the pixel art graphics are detailed with plenty of colour, there’s a great mix of grime and advanced technology and the augmented reality option adds depth to each of the locations, making revisiting them less of a chore. Frequent references to old technology invoke nostalgia and highlighting current concerns of how technology is evolving is done well, if a bit preachy at times. It plays quite traditionally for an adventure game with a simple yet effective user interface. The story is good, going from predictable and mundane to silly, especially in the final act, but uses the various setting and overarching themes well. There’s a good level of challenge in the puzzles although it can be a bit of a conversation fetch quest at times and it could have done with clearer signposting, but the leaps of logic are all logical and some adventure game quirks are covered in a humorous way. There’s no voice acting, but the constant soundtrack is varied and good. There’s no hint system, everyone seems far too friendly and helpful which doesn’t lead to much drama or conflict and there isn’t much replay value, but the game length is of a good length and these are minor issues in an otherwise solid game.

Link to review: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1452676/ Note - as I did not beat the game, this write-up should be taken more as a set of observations than a genuine review Tl;dr - The story is boring, puzzles frustrating, and music too loud. For all the visuals and nightlife ambience, VirtuaVerse falters too much in the other, more important departments.

An amazing throwback to the point n click games of yore. A must buy for anyone interested in old adventure games, cyberpunk, synthwave and retro tech

I still really love adventure games and I'm really happy I came across this one. It was actually the soundtrack that came up in the store first, I hadn't heard of this game yet. So, I was impressed with this game. It sticks with highly pixelated art but here and there you can see a few high-res tricks like when pixels move slightly left and right to indicate something in the virtual world or underwater. Overall the pixel art is beautiful and highly colourful. Some puzzles were hard - not Monkey Island 2 hard but I still had to use a hint guide sometimes to get a tip. Like many point & clicks it's easy to overlook small items you can click on and it's one thing that I never liked about the genre. Having to go back and systematically scan each scene for hotspots when you're stuck will probably make things work for you if you're stuck and don't want to use a hint guide. But overall it's great and I loved it.. Hope there'll be a sequel! PS: If you're a fan of this genre (and if you're not, you're probably not reading this), I can also recommend Whispers of a Machine. It's got very similar art and playstyle, and even the Sci-Fi setting. Just doesn't have the great soundtrack.