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Review for Alexey’s Winter: Night Adventure

Alexey’s Winter review
Alexey’s Winter review

In adventure games, sometimes even the simplest things can be complicated by unexpected challenges.  The titular protagonist of Nezhysoft's Alexey’s Winter: Night Adventure, living in the post-soviet Ukraine, desperately wants to get back inside his apartment from the freezing cold and relax in front of his TV, but nothing is destined to go his way this night. His subsequent adventure through the local neighborhood is a very short one with a relatable premise, but the weather worsens quickly so to speak, due to a lack of depth and notable production design limitations.

Many people will relate to this story. The player assumes control of Alexey, who, on the way home from the market one particularly snowy evening, realizes he has lost his apartment key. I felt for the guy. I’ve misplaced important belongings too. Fortunately, after doing some favors for his neighbors and throwing a snowball at an irksome crow, Alexey finds his key. Right after he enters and shuts the door to his apartment, though, he discovers that somebody has stolen his television! To reclaim it, Alexey will need to bundle up and head right back out to partake in more fetch quests and inventory puzzles. Surprisingly, some of the solutions are rather hurtful and disruptive to others in the area.  These tasks might have been meant to be humorous, but the atmosphere surrounding them seems dark and oppressive, which doesn’t mesh together very well and left me with confused feelings of dissonance that impaired my enjoyment.

Split into three distinct episodes (as they were originally released) Alexey’s Winter has all the elements needed for a small but satisfying storyline: an inciting incident in need of a quest, and a simple yet necessary obstacle preventing it. It’s easy to see the threat the blizzard represents, which gives legitimacy to Alexey’s supply-gathering errands for his neighbors, but a story is more than a sequence of events. Fully realized characters are needed to tie events together with logical reasons that advance the protagonist through the plot. The narrative here would have been better fleshed out if we got to learn more about the cast beyond their occupations and what they needed. The whole tale is simply paced too quickly for anyone to be memorable, including Alexey himself. Like the other characters, I simply didn’t know enough about him for his troubles to matter much to me.

Another shortcut taken is that the beginning and end of this game are told through text, not displayed visually. It’s a jarringly bare-bones approach for what should be the most consequential moments. The lack of animated actions continued during the course of my six-hour playthrough. While Alexey will move near to the hotspot selected, he’ll always stand with his back facing the player to conceal what he’s doing. For example, I directed him to pick up some snow from a parked car and the game only told me it was in my inventory rather than showing Alexey actually gathering it and fashioning a snowball. It’s a small thing, but far from the only example.

There are three main locations you’ll spend your time trudging between in pursuit of your objectives: the exterior of Alexey’s apartment, the market, and the police station. The hand-painted aesthetic could have been quite pleasing, but even it isn’t used to its full potential. The protagonist looks nice and is animated well enough, walking with a smooth gait. The surrounding environments, however, aren't treated with the same care. All of the outdoor scenes are too dark and visually monotonous. The issue is exacerbated by the animated snowfall in the foreground, which falls too fast and is overly bright and distracting. I could barely see the characters with whom I interacted, and I could hardly make out the items I needed to pick up. A faint spotlight will follow Alexey when he walks, and pan to any hotspots you’ve clicked, but that doesn’t help to spot what you need in the first place.

Alexey rarely goes indoors, and when he does the camera doesn’t follow him. When he’s inside the police station or his uncle’s apartment, a building window simply frames his head as text relays his actions or conversations. Even the finale shows only a neighbor standing just inside the door of Alexey’s apartment block, obscuring the interior.

The point-and-click interface itself is simple to understand with clear instructions (left-click to move and observe, right-click to interact), but it lacks even standard amenities. I missed a hotspot indicator, or even hotspot labels when I moused over items or people to indicate what was interactive. This would have done a lot to nullify my frustration in not being able to see them well enough. Inventory can be accessed from an icon in the top-left corner, but items can’t be combined and you’ll have to reselect one each time you guess wrong about its use.

Music could have helped elevate the experience, but regrettably it only augments the problem by using only one short, loud, repetitive string and what sounds like an accordion track for the whole game. It doesn’t change with the scenes or evolve with the story, and you can’t even turn the volume down without shutting the sound off entirely.  Voice acting and sound effects are lacking as well, and I keenly felt their absence.   

With such a simple premise, the main focus of Alexey’s Winter is on its puzzles, and the game does a good job of making sure they’re rooted in the plot. Most of them are logical and clued well enough to solve without the need of external assistance, but one of the tasks in the third and final episode didn’t harmonize with the narrative as well as the others. When he arrives at the police station, Alexey sees an old lady whom he must help cross the street before he can continue. While certainly a noble gesture, this requirement seems random and is incongruous with some of the more distasteful things Alexey is willing to do elsewhere to achieve his goals.

The end of the adventure sees Alexey and his neighbors watching a soccer game on his (spoiler alert!) reclaimed television. By that point, however, I was glad it was over, as the journey to get there just wasn’t as enjoyable as it could have been. Instead it offers a poorly paced series of quests that is continually hamstrung by the limited visual, auditory and interface elements.  Not that Alexey’s Winter is unplayable or without its positive merits, featuring a simple, relatable premise and a relatively intuitive set of objectives that make it easy to pick up and play. The developers have the skeleton of a solid adventure game here, but just like its titular protagonist, it’s a shame it ends up being snowed under by too many weaknesses to recommend.

WHERE CAN I DOWNLOAD Alexey’s Winter: Night Adventure

Alexey’s Winter: Night Adventure is available at:

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Our Verdict:

It’s a simple game that everyone should be able to relate to, but some of the design choices and a number of production limitations make playing Alexey’s Winter feel too much like trudging through a cold winter blizzard yourself.

GAME INFO Alexey’s Winter: Night Adventure is an adventure game by NezhySoft released in 2017 for Android and PC. It has a Stylized art style, presented in 2D or 2.5D and is played in a Third-Person perspective.

The Good:

  • Simple story with relatable premise
  • Intuitive controls and clear objectives
  • Nicely drawn and animated protagonist

The Bad:

  • Dark backgrounds combined with a poorly implemented snowfall make it difficult to see hotspots
  • Characters aren’t fully realized with backstories or motivations
  • A paucity of animation
  • Only one loud, incessant music loop throughout

The Good:

  • Simple story with relatable premise
  • Intuitive controls and clear objectives
  • Nicely drawn and animated protagonist

The Bad:

  • Dark backgrounds combined with a poorly implemented snowfall make it difficult to see hotspots
  • Characters aren’t fully realized with backstories or motivations
  • A paucity of animation
  • Only one loud, incessant music loop throughout
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