A game about a terrifying and misunderstood clown. It's kind of about loving people regardless of how little you understand each them. Deeply strange, kind of unsettling, pretty beautiful. Every puzzle is logical, and because of how the game values empathy for characters over progression, solving them is rewarding on an emotional level. My biggest issue is from the implementation of the dream world mechanic. When you go to sleep, you enter a surreal landscape with game hints and obfuscated backstory. But you can only enter this landscape if you sleep at Dropsy's home, which is inconvenient to reach for most of the game. This meant that I barely saw the dream world during my playthrough. I think this made the story feel less directed.

Other than that, this game is really easy to love. I'd highly recommend it if you love point and click adventure games or stories about valuing life.

Dropsy is a misunderstood being, seemingly blamed for a fiery disaster at the circus and almost ostracised from society; an easy target due to their seeming illiteracy and unconventional look. In reality and despite appearances, Dropsy just wants to make people happy and will help anyone out in order to do so, all to achieve that elusive hug.

It's a wonderfully bizarre world and refreshingly open for an adventure game - sure, some sections are progress locked but the initial area you get to explore is substantial. Definitely one to play in a sitting or two so you don't forget where things you can't access just yet are waiting for you. The inhabitants are equally weird, each with their own requests to fulfill to get that hug (and maybe some progress) and your only clues for solving them being pictograms. The puzzles thankfully aren't too taxing but not having to rely on dialogue cues or item descriptions is a nice change of pace and adds a different kind of gameplay element to the genre.

I just really gelled with the overall experience - the art style matches the places you explore and the strange people you meet, the music is truly a delight and I was taken in with the basic but charming story.

Surreal and grotesque point-and-click adventure about kindness, completely devoid of lines of dialogue or text in an understandable language. The puzzles are all rather linear and largely optional, but the depth of the gameplay is sufficiently enhanced by the ability to control several characters and a large map to explore freely and full of interconnected elements. The overall experience is very enjoyable and wholesome, and is quite a departure from the kind of challenge that is offered in more classic titles in the genre.

I'm not very good at these kinds of games. There's a lot of problem-solving, and the answers are usually too obscure for me to figure out on my own.

That said, if you like point-and-click games, please play this. There was clearly so much love and care put into making sure the art style and game feel accurately reflect old-school point-and-click adventure games from back in the day.

More than anything, it's an incredibly kind game.

Like Pulse which I played earlier in the year, this is a game that I actually Kickstarted aaaages ago back in high school but just never got around to finishing. As was also the case with Pulse, I figured it was high time that I actually sit down and finish this game, because I’ve certainly owned it for more than long enough to justify it XD. It took me about 7.5 hours to finish the game doing just about everything I possibly could, though I’ll freely admit I would’ve finished it a LOT sooner had I not been stubborn about not using a guide when I got stuck.

Dropsy is a story of the titular character, Dropsy the clown with a quite scary face. As the intro cutscene shows, his life used to be happy and fun, loving being at and being in his family’s circus every day, but it all came to a horrifying end one day when the circus tent burned down and his mother lost her life in the accident. Now living in the old, dilapidated circus tent with his dad and little doggy, Dropsy sets out to make a better place of a world that fears his face (and maybe just do something incredible while he’s at it). Dropsy’s “story” is a weird thing to write about, as this game actually has no text at all. Outside of the title card itself, you’ll never see any text in the game until the credits roll, not even in the save menus or title screen. Characters communicate with speech bubbles that have pictures in them depicting what they’re talking about, and that’s how you as Dropsy interact with the world around you.

The story that is there is remarkably well put together despite these self-imposed limitations, though it does fall a bit short, in my opinion. While the game’s main message of how doing good deeds brings good deeds back to you in return (and of course that you can’t judge a book by its cover) is one I quite like and think it does a good job at portraying, but they really fumble it in the last hurdle. I won’t spoil what the ending is here, but in taking the path they do for the ending, they end up muddying the waters of what the entire game is meant to say, and it just doesn’t logically parse with what the story has been up to that point. I’m not sure if they even are purposefully trying to have a point or message with the ending they went for, and they may’ve just been trying to be weird/shocking, but at any rate, I think choosing a different conclusion would’ve done the game a world of good. As things are, I think the story is certainly good, but decidedly not great.

The gameplay of Dropsy is a point and click adventure game through the island that Dropsy calls home. Exploring the circus, the forest, the military base, and the nearby city, you’ll control Dropsy as he goes around trying to progress the main plot as well as give hugs to as many (consenting) folks as he’s able to (with the game’s dedicated hug button!). Hugs are your side objective, and Dropsy will slowly decorate his room with more and more drawn pictures of those whom he’s made friends with. A neat feature is that Dropsy isn’t alone on his quest. There’s his clown make-up wearing doggy you start the game with, but you’ll also acquire a mouse friend and a bird friend too, and swapping between them to accomplish tasks only they respectively can is a neat way many of the puzzles are designed.

However, this is at the end of the day a point and click adventure game, and this game is absolutely not free from the pit falls this genre so often finds itself in. While I was able to do most things without consulting a guide, I ultimately had to, as some puzzles are just that unclear on how you’re meant to do them. This is made an even more serious issue, of course, by the whole “no text” gimmick the game has going for it. This means that you are entirely on your own for figuring out what items do and sometimes what they even are, and I think the game really would’ve benefited from some kind of way to analyze items in your inventory to help give the player a good kick in the right direction when they needed it. It’s far from the hardest point and click out there, but it’s certainly not going to convert anyone who already doesn’t gel well with this genre.

The presentation of Dropsy is wonderfully surreal and one of the coolest things about it. While it’s especially the case for Dropsy himself (with all of his weird, wiggly animations and mannerisms), the whole world is populated by strange and delightfully stylized people who act and move like caricatures come to life. The sound design adds to this surreal nature very well, and seeing what there is to see in the world you’re adventuring in is definitely one of the biggest highlights of playing Dropsy.

Verdict: Recommended. While this is certainly not one of my favorite games, and I certainly have my reservations about the story, this is still a game I had quite a good time with even when I was really stuck. The message of value kindness in the face of adversity is done in a way I found very endearing, and the unique approach to storytelling and surreal world design help make it an adventure that’s easy to really get into and want to see the next step of as soon as you can. If you’re a fan of the genre, this is totally one worth trying, but if you’re really turned off by point’n’click games, this is probably one to just watch a Let’s Play of instead of playing it yourself.

Una aventura point and click sobre un payaso con una cara rara que quiere ayudar a toda la gente posible y así abrazarles. El mundo del juego así como el arte son increíbles, acompañados por una música simple pero que no llega a cansar. Los personajes, al ser nuestro protagonista analfabeto, se comunican a través de dibujos y pictogramas que resultan fáciles de entender. El mayor problema para mi han sido unos cuantos puzzles que me han resultado obtusos (igual no ayuda que sea mi primera aventura P&C completada) en los cuales he necesitado ayuda "extra" tras estar horas caminando por todos lados sin encontrar lo que quería. En definitiva, una historia muy bonita sobre el perdón y la amistad con un toque católico (pero católico la parte buena, la de ayudar al prójimo) que te deja la sensación de ser algo especial.

Dropsy is a truly unique point-n-click adventure game from Tendershoot. Originating as a Something Awful "choose your own adventure" comic by Jay Tholen, director Jesse Bull takes a decidedly more lighthearted tone, creating a silly and refreshingly original adventure game that harkens back to times of old.

Bull and Tholen wrote a story about kindness and forgiveness. Dropsy's narrative is rather simple but told uniquely, using symbols instead of any spoken language. This make's Dropsy's story essentially universal, and it adds a lot of personality to the game. However, this can make certain story beats a little difficult to understand at points. The different NPCs you find wandering around town seem to have their own lives, appearing at different places at different times of day, which is an excellent touch. The world ebbs and flows and feels like it breathes, and that is a testament to the smaller details. Dropsy doesn't tell an Oscar-worthy story but it's one that mostly works very well.

As an adventure game, Dropsy follows genre conventions fairly straight. You wander around, solve puzzles, and push the narrative forward. Tendershoot does add variety to this by giving Dropsy a few animal friends who can reach certain areas that he cannot reach himself. Exploring the town is genuinely fun as not only is it visually creative but it has a lot of variety. However, Dropsy falls into a lot of the same pitfalls most adventure games do, such as occasional moon logic for puzzles and at points an aimless direction. There are quite a few points where I had to use a walkthrough because I didn't think to click on a random thing that was barely even in-frame. Since there is no written language, sometimes it's hard to tell what objects exactly are, which can make puzzles confusing at points. This isn't a problem for most of the game, but it can lead to occasional moments of frustration.

Dropsy's strongest element is its presentation. Beautifully detailed and fluidly animated pixel art paints a world full of variety and color. Each character you encounter feels different from the last, some are more exaggerated than others but none clash. Chris Schlarb's original soundtrack has a jazzy feel, with an emphasis on horns and bass, wrapped in a nice blanket of chiptune. The soundtrack is really what pulls the whole experience together and it lends the game a rather laid back, relaxed mood.

Dropsy is a very solid point-n-click adventure game that fans of the genre will adore. Its theme of kindness, its gorgeous presentation, and its fun exploration hold the game above its sometimes confusing puzzle design. Adventure fans itching for a more classic style experience would do right to check this out.

This is a really cool, unique take on the point and click genre that has some really creative elements that contribute both to the game's biggest strengths and weaknesses. The aesthetic and atmosphere of this is out of this world, with a richly detailed world with so much life that gets breathed into each aspect of it, with the themes of love and forgiveness being interestingly explored through the eyes of an illiterate, creepy looking, yet deeply compassionate clown who everyone hates. Having the player be put in the position of such an outcast immediately establishes this strong desire to do all you can to try and fix Dropsy's reputation and help as many people as you can to make the loveable goofball happy, but in time, this will change to wanting to help the cast of colourful characters for the sake of just helping them out and spreading the happiness around. Despite the limited interactions you actually have with most characters, they tend to have a very strong presence just from their expressive animations and the way they're made to have their own schedules they follow through the day/night cycle to make the world feel that much more alive.

It's pretty impressive how much personality these people end up having while also being integral to one of the other unique creative decisions of making the game entirely wordless, with any instances of text being replaced either with pictures in the case of interacting with characters, or with a code that the developer doesn't make you decipher at any point for anything else, making the visual language all the more important to convey information, which is done rather well and is such a powerful example of the whole "show, don't tell" mentality. I also find it rather powerful how Dropsy doesn't really show you outright fixing many problems that the characters have and more feels as if he simply offers support, sometimes the entire way to make someone that bit happier just being going up and hugging them. I feel that the message of being able to help people and make them feel that bit better being a virtuous act is lovely, you don't need to be the one to outright solve problems, you just need to make a true effort to help in the ways you can, that already counts for plenty.

The actual gameplay is cool but also a bit hit or miss for me on the other hand. While exploring the town is lovely, there are a number of puzzles the player needs to solve that feel rather obtuse or annoying in one way or another. One of the biggest issues is that while the lack of text is usually fine, it makes certain concepts really hard to grasp when you're playing, with some ways that the game tries telling you what to do feeling pretty tough to figure out, especially since this does have some issues with the big point n click problems of pixel hunting and moon logic causing me to refer to a guide at several points and usually thinking "how was I meant to figure that out?" This aspect of the game did start to seriously wear me down by the end, where more time felt spent having to go back and pick up an item that I didn't see and had no real sense of guidance about it even being there, rather than creatively coming up with interesting solutions to problems that you face. Really disappointing how frustrating I ended up finding this element of the game because it did end up dragging down my overall opinion of it pretty hard in places and if the actual puzzle solving element of the game just felt a bit more intuitive and involved it would've been an ​absolute smash-hit for me.

I also really love the way that this game delves into some seriously surreal, horrific territory in places without ever feeling cheap in its execution. Any moment where this becomes nightmarish or just downright weird feels entirely warranted in context and leads to some amazing imagery that almost makes the game entirely worth playing on those virtues alone. Overall I think that Dropsy is an extremely cool, unique game that I love in almost every way other than actually playing it. The good aspects of the gameplay get weakened by how vague it can be at times and the way that the day/light cycle both adds personality and tedium to the gameplay loop, being very much a double edged sword in its execution. Even so, this is totally worth playing and I wish more game devs were willing to be this bold in their stylistic decisions.

It's a text-free (in fact, language free) point and click adventure starring a gross weird clown. A misunderstood freak with a tragic past, a hugging button, animal companions, and all the sidequests revolving around making people happy, all these come together in a perfect storm for making me cry. This game is about big simple strong feelings, and it is as heartwarming as it is sad. I think it's underrated, I still think about it and I still get the small-yet-excellent soundtrack stuck in my head.