Developer: Jetdogs Studios, Fineway Studios
Publisher: Jetdogs Studios
Release date: March 9th, 2015 (Out Now)
Price: $8.99
Where to buy: Steam
I Spy with my naked eye, another adventure, item search based game on steam. Usually these type of games are like a visual novel combining in some puzzles to solve or locating required items to combine with doors or spots to progress through to discover more bits to the story. If you played games like Myst or many of the yester-year games on the PC, then this might spark your interest. As the game title suggests, it is based off of the lore of Frankenstein books(Mary Shelley) that center around Viktor Frankenstein. This time around you are a friend of Viktor who is invited to his home/castle to hang out generally. Without giving away too much of the story you discover things are a mess, and you must uncover what the heck is going on.
Gameplay is generally very simple to understand and navigate, if these type of games leave you confused or whatever the case maybe, there is a brief tutorial during the beginning bits. The UI is very clean and is very easy to work with, allowing you to take items from the inventory(located by moving your mouse to the bottom of the screen), and placing them to objects that combine to them to activate the correct progression. Along with the adventure mode, the item search part of the game is pretty much what you expect from those old books of iSpy you look through at the doctors office. You simply click items to remove them from the search and give yourself more items to find, as the bottom of the screen gives you four at a time to hunt visually. I played this game on the highest difficulty possible. To insure that I did not cheat(as much) while figuring out what goes where or speed though too much of the search puzzles. One of its shining elements of the variety of puzzles, from sliding title, all the way to Simon says. The game overall is pretty short, I spent from start to finish just over 2 hours. Going through every puzzle, it was a very positive experience.
One of its more weakest suits is the story, while not horrid, just not a very solid one. It involves you trekking through a eight or ninth century country side, among rubble and ancient abandoned locations that have seen better days. Simple but effective animations and still images layout the ground work for your visual feast. Every element seamlessly looking like well rendered pieces of art. Then you see the character renders. They are more or less like comic strip characters placed across the game, showing limited animation. It was primitive say the least, but effective. The monster more or less was one of the many reacquiring characters shown on screen next to Igor. Most of the time you see Igor fleeing, ether setting up a road block in various forms, or simply just walking off. On the other hand you see the monster just wondering around causing all sorts of trouble. From breaking down walls, flipping tables, stealing lunch money, and even drop kicking a house of cards. While it is really explained why he is doing this later on in the game. I am not telling you why, play it your self.
My final thoughts on the game is, it is fun. It is an indie game with large potential to stimulate many casual gamers out there. Its weakest suit being the story, the rest shines through of having a satisfying journey to reach that destination. If you love the horror novel genre, or even lore with the monster in the mix, its a nice twist on the classic tale. Everything gameplay wise handled without a flaw in regards of mechanics. Some puzzles were repeated a few times, like a slide title puzzle here and there within the object search segments. The music and sounds were top notch except whenever I heard a door open I always heard a stock sound from the AOL Instant messenger. The voice acting was a bit off for me, it felt very stiff and not loose, meaning the tone was robotic, rather then natural. I can say at least Elizabeth was the only one who did her role well. With a open heart I was glad to be able to sit down and play the game. I would like to thank Jetdogs Studios for a chance to cover this game!
Recommended
“Reasonable price range, offers very fun gameplay for the casual gaming market.”
