Encodya Review: A Beautiful But Unsatisfying Cyberpunk Point-and-Click Adventure
As a professional gamer and indie developer with over 15 years of experience, I was intrigued when the striking artistic direction of Encodya first caught my eye. This review covers my in-depth analysis after completing a full playthrough of the game. Read on for a breakdown of Encodya‘s immersive worldbuilding, logical but uninspired puzzles, flaws in gameplay design, and thematic ambitions that never fully paid off.
A Gorgeous Hand-Drawn Cyberpunk Setting
Encodya‘s standout achievement is crafting an absorbing dystopian future Berlin brimming with atmosphere. The contrast between the vibrant, hand-drawn protagonist and brooding technopunk environments creates an endearing juxtaposition that pulled me into its world.
Venturing through the rainy, neon-bathed streets, you can feel the oppressive control of corporations, media propaganda, and political corruption enveloping society. Seeing citizens desperately turn to cyberspace addiction to find meaning reveals an undertone of sympathetic tragedy behind the game‘s gorgeous facade.
As Tina and her companion robot SAM-53 witness corporate sabotage, police oppression, and the suffering of cyberjunkies firsthand, environmental storytelling and snippets of lore establish a setting that feels intriguingly contemporary despite its 2062 backdrop.
Immersive Sound Design and Voice Acting
Moody synth tracks backed by rhythmic percussion capture the melancholic allure of Neo-Berlin‘s gritty urban landscape. The soundtrack strikes a strong balance between setting an atmospheric tone while avoiding repetition, using dynamic layers and textures to evolve alongside narrative developments.
The voice acting also helps realize key characters, with Tina and SAM‘s playful banter adding heartwarming chemistry. Supporting characters range from sinister corporate agents to good-natured civilians trying to spread small acts of kindness in bleak times. The scripts communicate dystopian themes without feeling overly expository, helping players infer plot points and tensions organically through context.
Memorable Art Style Fusing Anime and Cyberpunk
(Example of Encodya‘s standout art style fusing anime and cyberpunk elements)
From sprawling corporate headquarters to cozy residential corner shops, each scene bears exquisite environmental detail. Lighting shifts subtly to indicate time passage as rainfall and flickering neon transform mood and atmosphere. This level of artisanal craft oozes ambition, resulting in one of the most visually impressive point-and-click settings I‘ve encountered.
Fusing traditional hand-drawn anime stylings with painterly Cyberpunk backdrops creates an aesthetic duality that cleverly parallels the game’s thematic tensions. It’s a risky art direction that pays off, distinguishing Encodya with an unforgettable personality that stuck with me long after the credits rolled.
Logical But Uninspired Puzzles Fail To Impress
Encodya employs standard point-and-click puzzle design revolving around inventory combinations and environmental interactions. While logically designed around real-world physics, the puzzles failed to challenge or delight me with those spectacular eureka moments characteristic of the genre‘s best.
Most solutions involve rather pedestrian uses of items that can be stumbled upon through enough experimentation. For example, obtaining a small robot early on and using it to access a tiny air vent duct to unlock a door. Sensible but hardly ingenious.
I sorely missed that grand revelation that the best adventure games provide when disparate threads suddenly interconnect into a glaringly obvious solution. Instead, Encodya‘s mundane puzzles had me methodically checking off a to-do list rather than reveling in intellectually stimulating discovery.
True Potential Stifled By Accessibility Constraints
The minimalist puzzle design likely helped streamline playtesting for multi-platform release. However, this came at the cost of innovation, with concepts barely scratching the surface of what felt possible given the cyberpunk setting.
I often felt the underlying game systems could have enabled far more creative mechanics. The cyberspace hacking minigame exemplifies this, what could have made for a radically new puzzle palette was simplified into banal pattern matching games.
Commercial scope realities likely pressured the team to constrain designs to accommodate mobile controls and simplify interactions for mass accessibility. Still, it was difficult not to mourn the untapped potential evident in Encodya’s world.
Sluggish Movement and Unresponsive Controls
My biggest point of frustration came from navigation and movement feeling needless clunky. Characters turn like tanks and move at a snail‘s pace, while the camera pans arduously slowly when scanning scenes for interactive objects.
Areas often require painfully tedious retreading if you miss clues or have to return items for later use. This aggravates the backtracking inherent to adventure game design into a more annoying malady. Ironically, these issues directly undermine the very accessibility Encodya ostensibly tries to bolster.
Control responsiveness also suffers from frustrating lag between input and action. With no option to sprint or quick travel, I was desperate for a speed setting, or at least dialogue skips. Thankfully, double-clicking exits helps bypass the sluggish walking speed.
The team would benefit tremendously from studying classics like Grim Fandango and mid-2000 mascot platformers that mastered nimble controls and movement decades ago. Modern titles like Unravel demonstrate tweaking acceleration, top speeds, and camera management can make sluggishness feel wholly unnecessary.
An Ambitious Narrative Felled By Its Own Loftiness
Encodya’s story shows glimmers of a poignant, politically bold narrative that, while not fully hitting the mark, displays admirable creative aspirations.
The inciting mystery draws players in effectively. However, the core reveals surrounding Tina’s family and the saving of Neo-Berlin from sinister corporate technocrats fell surprisingly flat.
Certain plot points strain suspension of disbelief, while major characters lack satisfying payoff. I remained hungry for the transcendent societal revelations the best dystopian fiction provides. Still, it was a valiant effort tackling universal themes about family, freedom, truth, and redemption.
I applaud having children reflect on the342 complex dangers of mass media manipulation, irresponsible governance, and self-destructive addiction cycles. There lies poignant symbolism in contrasting youthful innocence against corporate technocracy. The story provokes just enough introspection to inspire hands-on activism combating real-world detriments to social wellbeing.
Ultimately,Encodya delivers an abundantly charming facade atop a regrettably shallow core. For what feels like a prologue to an exponentially more subversive saga, I left desiring deeper gameplay and narrative evolution in future entries.
Final Verdict: Style Over Substance
If games were judged on artistic vision alone, Encodya would stand among the point-and-click elite. Both its painterly environments and synthwave soundtrack radiate an intoxicating ambiance that compels you to lose yourself in its reality.
However, disappointedly straightforward puzzles, slow movement, and an unfulfilling story left me wishing the game transcended beyond enigmatic style. There exists untapped brilliance in its world and characters, but marginal improvements to gameplay and narrative sophistication would unlock Encodya’s true potential.
I recommend trying Encodya for fans of visually stunning, thematically ambitious adventure games who won’t mind forgiving rudimentary design elements that hold back an otherwise promising experience. My hope is Encodya finds enough support to warrant a sequel addressing its shortcomings, as the framework exists here for something undeniably special.
