Review of Sinking Island by thorn969

This game was beautiful, as all of Benoit Sokal’s games have been. The scenery was lovely everywhere, as was the tower. I thought the story was reasonably clever with plenty of red herrings. I didn’t think the evidence was particularly strong, but that is not totally relevant. The engine, the PPA with clue management rather than inventory puzzles was clever and well done, for the most part. Occasionally, it seemed a bit arbitrary choosing between multiple, more or less equivalent pieces of evidence. I got stuck a few times before realizing I had to go talk to another person about a conversation and then use that person’s statement on the first person. It seemed, frequently, like statements should get more reaction from all characters involved and that characters should remember and react to what they had been told. The detective was very free in sharing the information he gathered, but suspects would act and talk like they didn’t have information he had given to them, if it was given in the wrong order. I also had a bug, of sorts, with the Island starting to sink before I was told that the Island was starting to sink, and then several hours later, I encountered someone who gave me the news that was already obvious.

But really… the story was good, the scenery beautiful… it was a great concept of an adventure game and I think it was essentially a proof of concept and the engine felt a bit lacking in development and some of the characters flat and… maybe a bit of a beta version… lacking polish. Still a solid game and worth paying for.

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Time Played: 10-20 hours
Difficulty: Hard