S&S Indie Review: Deponia

Title: Deponia
Format: PC
Release Date: Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Publisher: Daedalic Entertainment
Developer: Daedalic / Lace Mamba
Price: $19.99
ESRB Rating: T

Mixed with the various modern actions games, full of blood, guts, and gore, Daedalic Entertainment's recent release, Deponia, takes us back to the good old times, where the only things the hero/heroine had to stop the big baddie was nothing but their hands, their wits, and an endless assortment of random objects at their disposal.

Story

In Deponia, you play as Rufus, a wise-cracking and unruly citizen of Kuvag, who's only wish in life is to not be! He desperately wants to leave Deponia, a futuristic yet very junk filled version of Earth, and move to the great paradise in the sky, Elysium. Unlike his past trials and errors, though, it is this time that Rufus succeeds! That is, until his plan on saving an Elysium orbit pixie from the clutches of Organon soldiers backfires, and he is quickly thrown of of the cruiser and back down to Kuvaq. However, he soon learns that the Elysium girl he saved, Goal, has landed in the same place, and has taken residence in the Town Hall! (Unconscious, of course, but safe none the less.) So, after the usual point-and-click tradition of doing several hundred other things, Rufus finally wakes up Goal. Only to have her punch him out soon after and wake up in Kuvaq's Medical ward/Police Station/Fire Station. There, Goal is able to make out a few coherent words throughout her lines of gibberish in order to tell Rufus to contact he fiance, Cletus, who makes a deal with Rufus; Passage to Elysium in exchange for the safe return of Goal. The events that follow will lead the player and Rufus across Deponia, learning more about the world, along with a secret conspiracy that threatens life as everyone knows it.

Presentation

With most of the game taking place in a land made out of junk, you would expect the visuals to be on the same level. However, this is not the case. Deponia has that very classic, hand-drawn feel to it, which would look terrible on any other type of game, but it works well here. The different environments that Rufus comes across are all unique in their own way, and are immediately identifiable. The animations are nice and smooth,

and there was never once when I found anything in the background to be out of place or poorly made. However, since the game is fully voice-acted, there were a few times when the voice didn't really seem to fit the character,  but it's pretty trivial when compared to everything else, and there were a few times where the game automatically muted the voices for one reason or another, and a few times where the game just stopped when I entered a room and completed a puzzle correctly, but both were quite easy to fix by going into the settings or restarting the game, respectively. The sound effects and music also fit very well, with various thuds and clanks of metal. And there was a very delightful little folk-song type thing in between the various chapters, sung by a top-hatted, bearded man and a burly, off-screen chorus. (Huzza!)

Gameplay

As stated earlier, this is a point-and-click adventure game true to the roots of the genre. Your character has a drop down inventory where he stores anything you happen to pick up which can be accessed at any time. You move around, talk to people, and interact with objects all using the mouse. And, in case you're stuck, pressing the Space key will show everything you can interact with, though some of it may be unreachable at the moment (indicated by Rufus' line of "I'll just save my telekinetic powers for later.") Speaking of getting stuck, the game also took from the classic point-and-click games is the fact that you must pay attention to detail, mainly character dialogue. Most of the puzzles in the game require you to either have a great psychic powers (which Rufus seems to always save for later) or talk to someone/examine different things. And because of this attention to detail one must have, it can be quite easy to get stuck on a puzzle. I, for one, have honestly used a walkthrough for more than I would have liked. But even if it takes you an hour to understand, once you finally do accomplish it, it'll be a smack-in-the-head "Oh I should have realized" feeling, which I certainly got a lot.

Final Verdict

Deponia, at its core, is a wonderfully fun and artistic game that tries its hardest to bring back the old point-and-click genre, and succeeds at its job a bit too well. The game is plagued with challenging puzzles that require the attention to detail just short of OCD, and can at points be a bit buggy. However, if you have a weekend free, I would wholly recommend this game. Sure, at the end of the day it may seem a bit short, but it's definitely worth the 20 dollars required off of Steam to play it.

S&S Rating: 8.5/10