The Aggie Awards – The Best Adventure Games of 2021 page 16

Written by
AG Staff — February 18, 2022

Continued from the previous page...

Best Traditional Adventure: Mutropolis

Modern point-and-click adventures face an uphill battle these days. Their simple mouse-based interface and at times bizarre puzzle logic are considered by many to be relics of a bygone era, while to others, nothing will ever compare to the old beloved classics. So it’s always something special when a game like Pirita Studio’s Mutropolis comes along, able to tap into the best elements of the past while benefiting from everything the present has to offer. Incidentally, this is exactly what the game’s own cast is trying to accomplish. In the year 5000, after three millennia of life on Mars following a disastrous event known as the cataclysm, adventurers and academics have begun to repopulate planet Earth. You play as Henry Dijon, Head of Expeditions for Team Sigma, a group of archeologists searching for the eponymous fabled lost city. But after a kidnapping, a bit of treachery, and an introduction to an ancient goddess – who is really more of an awkward dork than you might imagine – you’ll find yourself right in the center of a narrative that perfectly balances intrigue and mystery with light-hearted fun.

Mutropolis takes place in an imaginative future, the story alternating between the Martian University’s Earth Campus, with all its hi-tech marvels, and archaeological sites on the still-largely-ruined blue planet, about which information is spotty at best. Whether in the form of textbooks at school that speculate Al Capone may have been “a popular quiz show host or soap actor” or the remains of a roller coaster Henry believes to have been an ancient mode of public transportation, references to the world as we know it are delightfully butchered and skewed throughout. The unique settings are brought to life by a charming cast of voice actors and whimsical cartoon-styled art in a vivid, expressive colour palette. Replete with compelling puzzles and unique twists on familiar conventions – including a second act sequence that comes together as impeccably as any you might remember from your old-school favourites – it may have fallen just shy of claiming any other individual awards, but there isn’t a single thing it doesn’t do well. Mutropolis is not simply our choice for Best Traditional Adventure of 2021, it’s a game that proves there’s still a wealth of riches to be excavated from the point-and-click format and offers plenty of hope for what lies ahead.

Runners-Up:

The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark

Lacuna

Backbone

Strangeland

Readers’ Choice: The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark

As with its acclaimed predecessor, The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark hearkens back to the best of the classic adventure games of yore, sporting vibrantly chunky pixel art graphics and a classic point-and-click interface. Environments are intriguingly designed and frequently host comical sight gags. The outrageousness of the dialogues contrasts the noir mystery and spectral atmosphere, making for a captivating combination. This new anthology of cases once again focuses on the earnest and determined Detective McQueen and the shrewd but airheaded Officer Dooley. The people (and non-people) they meet and the villains they engage are amusingly brash, including the shadowy Mister Wang (Detective McQueen’s catch-me-if-you-can nemesis); Geoff, a tentacled, purple-winged monster; and a surly Scout troop with some irresistibly delicious cookies. Inventive and often wacky inventory puzzles make up the bulk of the gameplay, though stand-alone minigames – some involving phone wires, glyphs, maps, location clues and models – occasionally surface. For embedding cutting-edge comedic tropes into the tried-and-true adventure framework, Spooky Doorway’s brilliant sequel snatches the Best Traditional Adventure award from AG readers.