First details dug up from Mutropolis

Written by Jack Allin — March 21, 2019 at 10:55

Archeologists tend to dig up ancient artifacts like primitive tools, burial chambers, and even dinosaur bones. But what will our distant future descendants make of the items they dig up from our times? We'll find out later this year with the release of Pirita Studio's comic point-and-click adventure, Mutropolis. 

Almost three thousand years have passed since a cataclysmic event forced all but a small remnant of mankind to leave the planet and colonize Mars in the 23rd century. Now, however, Earth is able to sustain life again, and one of the first steps in repatriating it is sending back "teams of scientists (biologists, engineers and enthusiastic archaeologists) to research the old world." All previous knowledge of our history has been lost, unfortunately, such that humanity's greatest achievements like the "pyramids or Humphrey Bogart's movies" have been all but completely forgotten. 

Henry and his "nerdy team of archaeologists" are part of one such expedition that has been digging for treasures with the "extremely rare hallmark 'Made in China' and watching weird Indiana Jones documentaries." A young man "obsessed with history," Henry is the main playable character, but the team dynamics represent a significant part of the Mutropolis experience. Totel has been the lead archeologist on the team for years, twins Luc and Micro "always have opposite opinions and unresolved family business," and the "mean but lovable" Cobra "doesn’t understand sensitive behaviour [but] she just doesn’t care." The gentle Carlata is new to the group, while a little robot named MAX with "big feelings and small wheels" was "manufactured by a Russian spy." 

Despite their differences, all is going well until Totel suddenly "disappears after an unexpected assault." His abduction leads the team to a "research center in a very fancy city in the new Earth," where they discover many forgotten things about the past, and later to the the fabled titular city itself, where they hope to rescue their leader. This quest involves both a rational approach through puzzles that contrast the "dusty old-fashioned archeology theme vs the futuristic set up," and a supernatural element involving "old gods and magical powers. Of course, there are good gods and bad gods." 

Presented in a lovely hand-painted aesthetic with a distinct Broken Age vibe, Mutropolis plays out like a traditional third-person, single-click adventure. The game promises more than "50 scenes full of weird cute characters," and plenty of "archaeological puzzles with a sci-fi touch" to solve along the way. In an interesting twist, players will know the relevance and purpose of the various items discovered, but as newcomers to an unfamiliar planet, the team itself is "clueless" as to the "real use for [such] objects and the history behind them." This results in numerous cultural references being amusingly misunderstood, such as the "misconception that Indiana Jones was a real archaeologist."

Designed by the two-person Spanish team of Juan Pablo González and Beatriz Gascón, Mutropolis is coming along nicely and is currently on track to release on Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux sometime in the second half of this year. To learn more in the coming months, you can follow the game's progress through the developer's website.