2/20/2017, David 64 – Among the Innocent: A Stricken Tale is a first person adventure that shows a keen understanding of classic adventure game puzzle design and pacing from debut South African developer Zero Degrees Games.
The game opens with a narrated sequence setting the scene of the player character, Peter York, in an argument with his girlfriend. He leaves on his motorcycle to clear his head in the South African countryside when he takes a turn on a back road and finds himself trapped by a landslide on a deserted farm. It quickly becomes clear that the homestead hides a troubled history that Peter may have to confront if he wishes to escape.
The farm makes for a sort of puzzle playground where every point of interest holds either a mysterious mechanism requiring your attention, a new inventory item to help you on your way or a note to help you piece together the mystery and sometimes provide valuable clues. At a time when many adventure games seem to forget the adventure is in the gameplay, not just the story, it’s refreshing to find a game that isn’t afraid to slow the player down and force them to really examine their surroundings with a fiendishly clever puzzle rather than simply collecting an item from point A and taking it to point B to continue the story. It really feels like a treasure hunt, where the treasure is the next revelation or twist in the plot rather than a walking simulator with simple, superficial puzzles there only to artificially lengthen the playtime. The developer has a story to tell, but respects that the player is there for the gameplay first.
Speaking of story, the game is the first in a planned series of five exploring the Kübler-Ross model (Better known as the ‘Five stages of grief’) and by the end it suffers somewhat from not wanting to give up too much with such a long journey ahead of it. The story begins with a seemingly self contained domestic mystery before taking an abrupt turn towards the paranormal and ending on a cliffhanger without resolving any of the story threads. Maybe this isn’t too surprising as the game is intended to be one piece of a larger series but I couldn’t help being left a little dissatisfied by the end. Ending with more questions than answers is one thing, but ending with no answers is another. Even if it is part of a series.
That said, I have to stress that any dissatisfaction I had with the story was just that. And didn’t reflect my feelings of the game experience as a whole. I may have not gotten the answers I wanted at the end, but it’s hard to complain when I enjoyed the journey so much. It’s hard to point to anything on the surface that makes Among the Innocent as enjoyable as it is. The real key to its success is its clever puzzle design and pacing. The first few puzzles are pretty simple and get you moving around the map, learning about key locations and making a mental note of areas you’ll need to come back to later. Then once you are familiar with the environment and how the basic gameplay works the puzzles get exponentially more difficult. Thankfully you are never given too many things to interact with at a time, allowing you to focus on how to use the items at your disposal rather than racking your brain over things that aren’t relevant yet.
In conclusion, if you are looking for a few hours of classic, challenging adventure game puzzles with a real treasure hunt, adventure sort of feel to it and don’t mind a real cliffhanger ending Among the Innocent: A Stricken Tale is a very impressive debut for for Zero Degree Games and definitely has me looking forward to what comes next.