We don’t want to spoil too much about the story as it is really quite good, but it definitely has a bit of a “Beneath a Steel Sky” vibe to it. It is a great introduction for the bleak world Amy inhabits and makes it clear right from the start that the game doesn’t pull any punches. The game opens with Amy grudgingly attempting to fix a reactor for the ministry of energy and then encountering the person who was sent to do the job before her. Instead, you can learn as much or as little about the gameworld as you like by talking to characters, examining the environments and generally just paying attention to what’s going on in the background. There is a lot of lore behind the world of Shardlight, but it doesn’t force it down your throat. It is during one such job that she encounters a dying man whose last wish sets her on a course to change history. Amy Wellard is just a simple mechanic, but when she contracts the dreaded Green Lung disease she is forced to take on dangerous government jobs to earn vaccine lottery tickets. It is set in a post-apocalyptic world where death, hunger and disease is rife, leaving the poor to scrabble for food and water while the rich “Aristocracy” controls the resources. Not the pixel-hunting.Shardlight, the latest point & click adventure from Wadjet Eye Games, opens 20 years after the world was decimated by bombs. Maybe Wadjet Eye considers this part of the genre’s retro appeal, but personally I’m not a fan-and I’ve only become more spoiled in the past few years, given that Wadjet Eye’s closest competitors in this space (Nordic and Daedalic) always give you the option of revealing hot spots. Occasionally you’re going to miss an object, however, and you’ll have no recourse but to walk through each available screen and mouse over anything that looks even remotely important. The art and puzzles are both superb at walking you through puzzles intuitively, for the most part. This last item is particularly galling because it’s the source of most frustrations in Shardlight. There’s also no way to show all hotspots on a screen and avoid the need for pixel-scouring. There’s no resolution options, meaning the game runs at a baffling 1280×800 with some sweet black bars on the side. The art gets better, the voicework gets better, but the games are still stuck with clumsy interfaces and awkward “action sequences” (thankfully few of them in Shardlight) and a dialogue system that seems not entirely up to the task of handling the complexity of Wadjet Eye’s stories.Īnd this is before we even get into the problems with AGS as a platform. The problem: Wadjet Eye is bumping up against the limitations of AGS, and this becomes clearer with each new release. It’s the jump-roping kids singing a nursery rhyme about the Reaper, or a train stuck out in the salt flats. It’s in the way Amy’s obsessed with classic cars, or the way a massive statue of a woman towers over the dingy marketplace where she spends most of her time. Shardlight takes the post-apocalypse-about as generic a video game setting as they come-and still manages to spin an interesting story. Last year’s Technobabylon took a smattering of old cyberpunk ideas and turned them into a strong whodunnit.
If there’s one thing I admire about Wadjet Eye, it’s their propensity for building interesting worlds atop well-worn foundations. You’re not allowed to enter the church until you’re ready to die, at which point the cult will let you commune with the Reaper-a top-hat wearing fellow with a fondness for ravens. True to their name, they also live quite a bit better than the poor people in the muddy slums-or should I say the rebels in the muddy slums?Īnd then there’s the Reaper Cult, a sect based out of the ruins of an old church. These vaccines are dutifully metered out by the ruling class, the Aristocrats, all of which have taken the names of Roman Emperors-though they dress like Revolutionary War-era soldiers.
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