Encodya, a love letter to old-school point-and-click adventure games, with classic mouse controls, pre-rendered static backgrounds, 3D models and a classic item management system.
Encodya is about a nine-year-old orphan named Tina and she lives with a robot named SAM-53 in a rooftop shelter in Neo-Berlin, a dark megalopolis controlled by corporations. Tina has learned to live and survive alone, scavenging from city dumpsters and eking a living from scraps. SAM-53 is always with her, programmed to protect her no matter what.
The graphics are quite charming with exceptional backgrounds, showing fantastic attention to detail with a style that is part cartoon, part realism and fully teeming with life and it really sells the cyberpunk setting. The overall aesthetic is both atmospheric and immersive, effectively portraying just what life is like in Neo-Berlin: back alleys scattered with trash, walls covered in graffiti tags and art, derelict cars blocking roads and bright advertising bots slowly spinning overhead.
The sound design seems on point, with all the correct sounds for all the various futuristic vehicles and cyberpunk doodads. The voice acting for Tina and SAM-53 is very well performed but many of the side characters leave a lot to be desired, failing their delivery and making you think it is just a placeholder when compared to Tina's and SAM-53's performances. As mentioned above, Encodya is a classic point-and-click game, everything is controlled with a mouse. You click on the ground and the character moves there, you click an interactive item and you get choices of what to do, I.E. look at, pick up (if it is an item), interact with and talk to (if it is a person or a robot).
You control Tina and SAM-53 though not at the same time, with a click of a button you switch between them. SAM-53 is better at talking to characters that are more tech savvy and interacting with technology that Tina does not know, translating binary and other languages that Tina doesn't know.
Tina on the other hand is better suited for puzzles that require small hands and interacting with some characters that do not respond that well to robots. Tina and SAM-53 also have different comments about the same items and characters so it is definitely worth it to frequently switch characters and see what they have to say.
All in all a pretty solid love letter to point-and-click adventure-games of the yesteryear.
Encodya has the charm of Studio Ghibli, the setting and atmosphere of Blade Runner and the humour and game style of Monkey Island. If you like any of these and you like the classic point-and-click games or even are curious about this classic type of games,you'll most likely enjoy the roughly 10 hour journey of Encodya.
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