Sorry for the nonsense title. First let me apologize to those at IronCode for not getting this out on time, and mostly to you readers. I totally dropped the ball this time. There was no excuse, I simply was being too lazy today. I promise it will never happen again! Today is still Tuesday April 28th, at 11:23 PM, so technically I can still get this out on time. I’m going to actually schedule tomorrow’s (xblcg) review for 8 pm. To give Pahelika at least 20 hours by itself. I’ll try for 4 pm for Thursday, and finally 12 pm for Friday’s review. So at least they have some time before another review pushes it down. Then I’m going to try to get back on the ball for Monday. So again I apologize. So without further ado, may I present to you, Uhfgood’s review of IronCode Software’s Pahelika: Secret Legends. Another quickie note, this is technically a preview, although I’m reviewing the full game. They don’t have a demo yet and are going to release on April 30th. Since they asked me earlier I thought I would go ahead and give this review a priority. (As well as another developer has asked to review their game, which I already was going to, so I decided to push them up to Thursday. So now Tuesday’s and Thursday’s reviews are now set for next week. Sorry for any inconvenience.)
I’m going to go ahead and say up front this looked pretty impressive. The visuals are tight, can’t say much for the music just yet because I haven’t really gotten into the game. But from the looks, it’s sort of an adventure/puzzle game sort of Myst like, if-you-will. Another interesting tidbit. IronCode’s Last Man Standing is actually their first release, so it was really prone to have defects. (Note I didn’t say bugs.) I was going to review their other games before this, but since I got this request directly, I’m doing this next. In any case, let’s see how the game plays. Okay so first impressions here, is there is some sort of atmospheric music. It’s not bad but it is a bit floaty. (Basically abstract enough it feels like you’re floating or disconnected) That’s not very good to me, but it’s also not bad, the music is accomplished. That is to say, it doesn’t sound musically bad, it’s just not to my tastes. The interface to the “main menu” is like a room. There’s options like “Change Stuff” and “Add Player). Actually the point and click interface is quite easy to “read”.
Okay so here we are in the opening, and there’s a nice “story” being displayed in panel form. The drawings are decent, and the narrator is really excellent. Sounds like they put some money into it. The music is actually quite good too. And then I get to the actual game, and there’s your character, and his voice acting is excellent as well. The in game graphics are as good as i saw in the screenshots and video. Okay so first thing is a tutorial. This game makes it very easy to play. Essentially moving the mouse cursor over an interactive item makes it sparkle. Then you can click it to use it. If you click on something that goes into the inventory it goes directly there, and then you can click it and move the cursor over another item in scene, and use the two items together. It’s not even click-and-drag, but simply click, move, click. So basically you have to solve puzzles. Like finding keys and pieces and putting them together. It’s pretty much standard Myst-like adventure game fare. (Standard being solve puzzles to figure out the story, not that this doesn’t have unique points.) Okay so after the brief but adequate tutorial, I’m shown some more story, and then taken to a screen, to where I can start the game.
Quick note about the story, I don’t want to give too much away, but basically it’s about a magical book that helped a King defeat his enemies. Now, as you play the game you need to figure out if such a book exists. Apparently it seems to autosave. It takes the name of the user currently logged in. You can change or add players I guess, but I didn’t really check that out. The sound effects are crisp and fairly atmospheric. When you click on something interactive, a message will sometimes pop up. Or take you closer to it or whatever. When I check the info button, apparently not all text is showing up, not sure why. So far it’s an interesting game, though i can’t move anywhere right this second. Well I figured out the first “room” or “scene”, looks fun and interesting. I think you should give it a try. The demo probably won’t be available until Thursday, but, that’s not very far off.
Final Analysis: Looks very interesting. Nice production values, and well polished, with an interesting story. You should try it out.
Name: Pahelika: Secret Legends (pronounced Puh-HELL-lick-uh)
Developer: IronCode Software
Price: $19.99
Where you can get it: Info can be found here, and I assume the demo will be found here as well on April 30th.
Tags: Adventure, fun, game, games, independent, Indie, IronCode Software, point'n'click, Puzzle, windows