Review of The Perils of Man by thorn969

This game was very short. And quite easy. Pretty much all the puzzles were of the pixel hunting variety, although occasionally you were required to put together relatively simple facts. It sometimes seemed to be trying to be educational. I didn’t like the inventory system and the tracking was occasionally off. The hints tended to be weak and unhelpful. But the biggest problem was in terms of bugs. I played on PC; I don’t know if these problems also exist on iOS. I didn’t run across any game-stopping bugs, but frequently the game would allow you to do things in a wrong order that screwed up later aspects. The biggest example was that I didn’t actually find the Mark III Risk Atlas, the second, improved Risk Atlas and the game kept going with everyone acting as if I had found the improved Risk Atlas. In a tracking bug, I was able to walk across a room without entering the room so the camera didn’t follow my character. Some cutscenes stopped playing or lines of dialogue got cut off without me pressing anything also.

The game did try for profundity and… I’m not sure it really achieved it. Could it achieve it in about 4 hours of playtime? The premise of the Risk Atlas and foreknowledge and time travel and its potential consequences were interesting… I definitely feel the game didn’t do enough to attach us to the characters for a PC adventure game. The ending was… I think unsatisfying for me. I think we should have been given more choices and more opportunity to consider potential consequences. Isn’t that what the game is all about?

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Time Played: 2-5 hours
Difficulty: Easy