Yesterday (iOS)

I used to really enjoy point and click adventure games but I've kind of fallen off playing them in the past 10+ years. Part of that has been moving onto other genres and part of that has been Lucas Arts' retirement from the genre. That said, there have still been a number of studios that have consistently been making point and click games in the interim. One of those is Pendulo Studios who made the Runaway series of games and The Next Big Thing. I actually own the first Runaway game (Runaway: A Road Adventure) but as with many games I buy during Steam sales I've yet to even download it let alone play it! However, one I finish Pendulo's new game, Yesterday, I'll definitely be checking it out to see how it compares. 

Point and click adventures are perfect for the iOS - touch substitutes well for a mouse, there're slow paced, bite sized and you can save anywhere. Yesterday does some really neat things to make the user-experience even more streamlined. Since the last 'new' point and click adventure I played was (I think) Grim Fandango I don't know if these are additions developed specifically for this game or if they're now the genre standard.

The most notable feature is that when you double click on an area of the screen your character basically teleports to that new region rather than walking there. It may seem like a very simple, almost trivial, addition but it really helps speed up the gameplay when you don't have to wait for your player to complete his slow walking animation to get around the screen. This also helps to prevent the monotony of hunting around your environment at a snail's pace. 

Another great addition is a button that you press that automatically highlights all the objects in the environment that you can interact with! This completely removes all the frustration inherent to the 'pixel hunting' that was an integral part of old point and click adventures. 

Both of these additions are fantastic because they allow you to focus on the most important aspects of a click and point adventure - the puzzles and the story. There is nothing inherently skill based or enjoyable about clicking around the screen on every pixel to see if it's selectable (and then waiting for your character to walk around while doing it).

The story of Yesterday is difficult to explain without spoiling but it basically surrounds the main character, John Yesterday, a researcher on the occult who awakes in hospital after apparently attempting to commit suicide. What follows is a fairly serious story that weaves together the occult, satanism, murder, a grand conspiracy (of course) and also an element of fantasy. You can tell from some of the dialogue that this was a game perhaps not written by native English speakers or possibly translated from a different language (Pendulo Studios are based in Spain), but it doesn't ruin the narrative at all and there's still some very good characterization. 

The puzzles are also well done in that they're logical and actually make a modicum of sense. Sure the solutions to puzzles in the Monkey Island games were hilarious but some of them could only be solved with trial and error. I've yet to find a similarly annoying puzzle in Yesterday and as a result you actually get a sense of satisfaction when you do find a solution.  

Voice acting is solid except for one swarmi character who has the worst East Indian accent I've ever heard! Seriously, Pendulo - if you ever revive that character in a future game I'm available to do that character pro bono! The visuals are very good with some really nice art direction. This was actually a PC game first (see the pic above) so the graphics shrunk down to an iOS device look very crisp and clean. 

Yesterday is available for $6.99 on iTunes which, in the crazy economy of iOS games, seems like a lot but I've had a lot of fun with it so far and definitely think it's worth a look if you're interested in a new point and click adventure. 

Lavan