1. Do you remember the nineties? Did you play PC games in the nineties? Did you point and click? Did you adventure? If so, Dropsy is going to be some really comfortable territory for you.
2. Dropsy is a truly unpleasant looking clown. The game lets you know this by having an extra realistic portrait of him be the first splash screen you see on startup, before even the developer and publisher logos.
3. The plot is set off w/ a cut scene that shows a circus being
burned down by an errant cigar, causing much destruction. Dropsy is blamed for
this event despite having no involvement, presumably because he is truly unpleasant looking. Your main objective, as Dropsy,e is to redeem your
name, help your father and get people to like you again. You wind up doing more than that.
4. As per genre standard, the way you play this is by clicking on things until it's time to stop clicking on things. Not everyone enjoys this and that's okay.
5. Dropsy's graphics generally take their influence from the same
adventure games the gameplay is based on. It is not just on a technical
level, not just because it's pixel art. The style borrows quite heavily
form the cartoonish look of LucasArts games especially. It does up the weirdness ante by quite a bit though. Dropsy is truly unpleasant looking, after all.
6. Probably the most striking thing about Dropsy's presentation is doesn't use language of any sort. Everything in game is communicated through pictures. It really struck me how this affected gameplay. Some things seemed to be communicated very concisely and clearly by using pictures instead of text. Some things were a lot more obtuse. It seemed gimmicky at first but is actually a pretty powerful mechanic.
7. Another upside of the use of pictures instead of text is some story beats remain ambiguous. Outside of the game, I rather enjoyed going and reading other people's varying interpretations and theories on what everything meant.
8. The music added a lot too. It starts out good enough but as the game progresses, themes and motifs begin to develop and that brings you into both the music and the game. The production quality seemed to fit the overall look and feel too. It struck me as a distinctly small studio affair but it was very skillfully done w/ a personal touch that fit right in w/ the old school elements of the presentation. The whole thing feels very much handmade.
9. The world is mostly open from the very beginning of the game w/ only a few parts locked off. I actually think the early portions of the game could benefit from a little more restriction as it is pretty easy to get confused as far as what you are supposed to be doing.
10. There is an absolute ton of sidequesting available, mostly in the form of running errands for various people in order to get hugs from them. Combined w/ number 9, you sometimes feel a bit like you are just wandering around aimlessly. You are constantly looking for various things indicated only by pictures for people who are known only by their appearance. There are definitely moments in the game where I resorted to random or brute force strategies to try to solve puzzles and it felt like I was spinning my wheels at items. The fact that you can't fast travel until later in the game doesn't help either.
11. If I have a main complaint about Dropsy, it's that various elements in the game world never really seem to link together. In the very best point and click adventures, by the end of the game, you start to feel like the whole thing is a big knot and there is a great deal of satisfaction getting that last bit of string aligned such that the whole thing straightens out w/ one quick pull. This feels like a bunch of discreet tangles you unravel one at a time. Yeah, I think I took this analogy as far as I'm gonna.
12. Number 12 is not that important.
13. Dropsy gets a bit slow at times and I'd be lying if I said I loved every single moment I spent playing it. This is short enough to plow through in an evening if you wish but it's better enjoyed bit by bit over, a few segments at a time so it doesn't drag too much. Dropsy is one truly unpleasant looking clown w/ some serious personality and the moments where everything comes together are worth playing through the ones where they don't.
No comments:
Post a Comment