Zklamání mísící se s nadšením. Nadšení plyne z další poctivé pravověrné klikací adventury ze staré školy, tak jak jsme tituly ze stáje Wadjet Eye Games v posledních létech rozmazleni. Čili vyspělá adventura, která stojí na postavách, logických úkonech a špetce cynického humoru. Čistě žánrově tomu nelze vyčíst v podstatě ani zbla. Puzzly jsou různorodé a promyšlené; s jednou výjimkou prosté pixel huntingu i zoufalého zkoušení všeho na všechno. Byť je to přísně lineární, tak některé dílčí úkoly mají vícero řešení, je tu několik sympaticky zákysových míst, které však nejsou otravné; po jejich rozlousknutí rozhodně nebudete mít pocit "to byla kravina". Chytře implementovaný nápovědní systém případné zavaření mozkových závitů ulehčí, dialogy jsou dobře napsané, společník neotravný, vykreslený svět je nosný až hanba, postavy též (je to viditelně postavami, světem i dějem inspirované původním Planescapem; akorát v robohávu), pixelová grafika nádherná, předestíraná dilemata nečernobílá.

Co je tedy tím na začátku zmíněným zklamáním? Neuspokojivý pocit z dějového oblouku. V jiných žánrech by to až tak nevadilo, u adventur, kde přeci je příběh jedna z hlavních složek, to je na pováženou. V rámci necelých osmi hodin se dostane jen na prolog, jedna kapitolu a pasáž, která nejprve působí jako intermezzo s dějovým zvratem, po kterém bude následovat finální kapitola. Jenže ouha, ono intermezzo se ukáže býti epilogem. Působí to jako utnuté v polovině, kterýžto pocit umocňuje, že se to honosí snad deseti možnými konci. Jeden by z toho získal pocit, že v průběhu hry bude činit rozhodnutí, která budou ovlivňovat jeho postoj/světonázor (a tendence i možnosti k tomu jsou) a ve finále se zúročí jeden z nich. Nic však nemůže být vzdálenější pravdě, po finálním rozhovoru máte (takřka bez nadsázky) deset míst kam kliknout a dle toho následuje jeden z konců (přesně odstupňované na škále od vše dobré přes pragmatický až po nihilistický); a až na dva jsou všechny vyloženě do počtu. Krom jednoho z těch závěrů k tomu není budováno, působí to děsně amatérsky. Celá ta finální pasáž je hrrr, uspěchaná, nezasloužená. A to je škoda, dvojnásobná s ohledem na jinak nepopiratelné kvality titulu.

Primordia je nesporně dobrou adventurou na jeden příjemně strávený víkend. Což není špatně, protože herně nabízí vše, co byste od podobného titulu čekali. Navíc v kvalitě, která není vždy pravidlem. Ovšem tady bylo našlápnuto na mnohem více než "pouze" sakra dobrý žánrový titul na jedno zahrání.

Again, a very in-deph game and with a reflection of Gemini Rue with a missing memory as part of it. I should one day get around to seeing all multiple endings as I'd like to know how you can complete the game with all robots and so on.

Edit: The story is set on an Earth far in the future where humans are such a distant memory that robots view humans as some kind of a god-like beings complete with a bible that teaches robots that mankind is "A perfect machine from the heavens that built them in it's own image" and so on. You even get quizzed on this to get a bomb from a old military robot that's guarding them.

The start of the game you play as Horatio Null-built who even built his own little sarcastic companion who can help out in reaching items and such that are out of reach. Horatio is building a ship to take off from this planet where energy is scarce and he had just discovered a energy core, but a robot comes and steals it, taking it back to this city that Horatio has to investigate to find out where the item has gone.

I do love how all the robots have a surname based on who build them and because Horatio has amnesia, he doesn't remember who built him, but his companion's surname is "Horatio-built" and there's even a case where you have to solve a dispute between two who have fallen out and each wishes to name the robot they created together and take full ownership of him.

As you can guess, the oldest and rarest of machines are named "Man-built" because they were built by humans and had most-likely seen and interacted with humans when they were still on the planet that is now a giant polluted trash-pile. Another great hit from one of my favourite game developer/publisher Wadjet Eye Games.

I hope you like the color brown.

I also hope you like the dulcet tones of Logan Cunningham, best known for strumming your strings as the narrator of Bastion and Transistor. I hope you like that he's in good company when it comes to the other voices and the words that they say.

I hope you like not hunting for pixels in a graphic adventure, not dealing with moon logic, multiple endings, choices that matter. I hope you like having more than one way to solve a puzzle, a sardonic sidekick that isn't obnoxious, gentle hints when you're stuck. I also hope you don't hate this writing schtick I quite genuinely stumbled into and am now struggling to escape.

Graphic adventures are hard to get right. Moon logic sneaks in when designers are familiar with puzzles. Trite mechanical obstacles are easy to sprinkle in. Dialogue can be grating instead of clever, self-aware satire can devolve into shallow reference. Tracking information can be a chore, travel can become an interminable timesink. Primordia dodges all of these bullets. It's smartly constructed, engaging and well-paced, and a striking reminder that Wadjet Eye is the publisher when it comes to keeping the genre alive.

It is also very, very brown.

It's not quite as emotionally hard hitting as the later Blackwell titles, but it's more thematically up my alley -- I work in machine learning/computer vision and Primordia touches on quite a few of the topics my grad school friends and I would riff on to avoid actually doing our work. The writing, music, art, voice acting, etc. are all also absolutely on point. My only complaint is a little bit of frustrating pixel hunting here and there. One instance almost lead to me missing a really nice touch in my preferred ending, but I caught it while checking out the other endings. Still, a minor problem compared to how much Primordia got right.

Completed with 100% of achievements unlocked and all seven endings. Very different in setting from The Shivah, Primordia takes place in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi world, now inhabited only by sentient machines after the apparent extinction of humans. I'm generally a fan of sci-fi, so the mystery and open questions presented by the game world made for a compelling experience, and ultimately the story comes to a satisfying finish, especially with the variety of choices available at the very end. In terms of the gameplay, Primordia's puzzles mainly follow the more traditional item-based approach and for the most part avoid becoming too obscure, though on occasion there are situations where it's easy to overlook a vital item (I had a guide to hand to help with this sort of thing). What stands out about the game, though, looking back on it, is definitely the philosophical/moral themes, focused around the rights and wrongs of collectivism and similar. An impressive achievement.

This is a point-and-click game that I apparently bought in January last year for £2.09, though I'm not sure why I did. You play as a humanoid robot called Horatio who, alongside Crispin, his wise-cracking floating assistant, have to venture out into a post-apocalyptic, post-human world inhabited solely by other robots in order to recover a power core after it's stolen from your home.

It started off quite well. I liked the painterly art style and moody atmosphere, and the puzzles were challenging while still being logical. Pretty quickly, however, these puzzles became horribly obtuse and I was forced to take the 90s era Lucas Arts tactic of just using arbitrarily using everything in my inventory on everything else in the vague hope of making progress. Unlike those Lucas Arts games, however, there was none of the humour or the charm here to see me through. This was exacerbated by how, too often, an item I needed was easily missed as it just looked like any other piece of random scenery; it wasn't until I happened to hover my cursor over it that I noticed it was something I could even interact with. As it wore on, this got worse and worse, and from about the half-way point I just used a guide to see the game through to the end for the sake of doing so. Some of the later puzzles seemed entirely obscure: I had absolutely no idea how I would have figured them out by myself, and a few were dependent on game mechanics that, to my knowledge, were completely un-tutorialised.

It's the first game I played and completed on my Deck, so there's that novelty, and it's only three and a half hours long, but I'd struggle to recommend this to any but the most hardcore of point and clickers. Developers like Amanita Design and Telltale Games have proven that there are ways to modernise these sorts of games, but this felt like a relic.

4/10