izigame.me

I hate to say it, but as a point & click adventure this is pretty much a failure. Yes, it has nice graphics and features an interesting setting, but apart from that it just suffers from too many bad design decisions:
- Screens are mostly empty: there's nothing to investigate or interact with in 80% of the areas.
- Exits are easily missed: the glowy ring cursor is so inaccurate that two exits that are close together look like they're the same.
- Clues are rare: good adventures give the player hints what they need to do when they interact with the environment. Here, you always get the same phrases, e.g. "I don't need to go down there."
- Puzzles are rare: you hardly ever have more than one usable item in your inventory; the problem doesn't lie in figuring out a solution, it's finding the right place to use the frigging thing.
- The opposite of "show, don't tell": most of the time you just wander around, wondering what you're expected to do next. And if you find a hint, it's in the form of a shitload of text. I wouldn't mind this if this was a text adventure, but it's not.
- A pathetic heroine: our protagonist refuses or is incapable of the simplest of tasks. Please allow me to spoil a representative example of the kind of challenge we're presented with:
A simpleton boy leads our heroine to the entrance of a cave where she is supposed to fetch an invaluable prehistoric toy. Unfortunately, a shallow brook about 2 paces across is "blocking" her path. Since we wouldn't want our feet to get wet, we try to open a dam, but fail to do so since we lack the physical strength.
Thankfully, the simpleton boy is willing to help but breaks the lever in the process. Recalling a rotten rowboat we saw on our way, we try to pick up a paddle swimming in the water. Alas, it's out of our reach until we remember to use the 1' piece of broken lever. However, the paddle is wet and dirty! Quite understandably our fearless heroine refuses to touch the vile thing. So, we head back to the boy, asking him to pick it up. Unable to resist our charm, he's happy to oblige. While we're at it, why not ask the boy again to open the dam for us? He's way stronger than us, after all.
Finally, the path to the cave is clear. Although I am left to wonder why our heroine doesn't refuse to walk through the undoubtedly filthy muck that used to be a riverbed. Or why she happily enters a dark, cold, wet, and potentially dangerous cave on her own. And picking up a grimy old toy from the cave floor must have required her to summon all of her courage.
And this example leads me to my last point point:
- A lack of humor: All of the above could be forgiven and would actually provide a perfect opportunity to inject some self-deprecating light-hearted jokes. But apparently, the game's authors felt our heroine's behavior to be entirely reasonable and therefore to taken very seriously.
Edit after finishing the game: While I was very much tempted to simply abandon this game, I was too curious to learn more about the story. Thanks to the walkthrough posted here, I made it to the end despite the issues.
I felt the game got slightly better in Barockstadt and our protagonist even develops a little towards the end. So, while I'm still not prepared to recommend it, it doesn't stay as tedious as it was in the beginning.