Game #1236: Trüberbrook

 Take a troubled trip to Trüberbrook.

 Well.... Trüberbrook is definitely one of the most gorgeous games out there, as the environments were made by hand, and then digitalized for the game. It's been compared to Wes Anderson's stopmotion movies, and the comparison is appropriate. As for the game itself, it's a point-and-click adventure game, like the Monkey Island games of old, but maybe it stuck too close to its roots...

 The game is about Tannhauser, a guy who wins a stay at a hotel in the small town of Trüberbrook. Except he never took part of a raffle. And thus, stars Tann's adventure. At first the game gave me a few Twin Peaks vibes, with Tannhauser talking to a radio to a mysterious 'Evelyn', but that's as far as the Twin Peaks references go, as there aren't all that many townsfolk you regularly interact with, and they don't feel all that mysterious or interesting.

 The game is built like older Point and Click games, basically, collect items and then try them out on stuff to progress. It's a bit more streamlined in that you can't select items from your inventory, but rather, when you interact with stuff you get an action wheel with four choices: Collect, Talk, Examine or a Cog, and if the Cog can be selected then it means you have the right item, or one of the right items, to use. Not every action is available on every interactive element, be it a person on an object, which does cut down on trial and error... as well as possibly funny 'Can't do that' results. Puzzles and item interaction are just as nonsensical as the worst in the genre, for good or bad.

 In my opinion, even though the game feels smaller and more streamlined that classic games in the genre, in a way, it felt more convoluted and aimless that I would've liked. Sometimes the puzzle is finding out who to speak with AGAIN after you picked up something new. So chapters 1 and 4 sometimes dragged a lot since I should speak with someone I already talked with. And maybe I'm being unfair, maybe older games sometimes felt just as aimless... but in that case, I don't feel like this is something that aged well. Or maybe it's how nonsensical and convoluted doing certain tasks can be. It also doesn't help that the narrative and the dialogue simply... isn't very entertaining. The game does introduce a few quirky characters, but... they simply didn't do it for me.

 That said, there's a single puzzle that takes the cake for bad game design. In chapter 4 you are given a long string of numbers. You'd better write it down, or take a screenshot as we did, because if you didn't... you won't be able to type them down by memory. Got it? Now you have to find the NPC to give the numbers to... which was bafflingly turned into a four-option five or four question affair. That's right, you are forced to give out the number through 4 or 5 different inputs. So if you accidentally pick the wrong set of numbers... you have to do it all over again. But it gets better. One part of the number is smudged, so you have to try three different choices(As the fourth one obviously can't be the right number, since the numbers don't fit the string). So, worst case scenario, assuming you don't accidentally pick the wrong number, you'll have to try all three choices, wasting your time just because. If it's meant to be some kind of ironic joke on these games... then it doesn't land.

 Can't say I thought Truberbrook was a good game. It's beautiful, that's for sure, but neither plot nor gameplay lived up to its gorgeous aesthetics. 

 4.0