Encodya may be the first game from ChaosMonger, but it's based on their own short film called 'Robot will protect you' released in 2019. It's clear early on that this world has been lived in a long time with the developer.
In Encodya we’re in the near future date of 2062 and we play as both Tina, a 9 year old girl, and SAM-53, her robot. Sam-53, or Sam, is Tina’s dedicated nanny robot that she’s lived with her entire life, and her best, and only friend, a robot-model that is given to all new-borns to help protect them as they grow. Tina’s mum died 3 years previous of an overdose of cyberspace, so since then, together they live on the streets of Neo-Berlin.
The short intro sets up for an average day in the life of the pair trying to get along in the city. Todays jobs are find some oil for Sam, a new pair of socks and food for Tina, and repair their canvas shelter. Once the day to day jobs have been completed however, their usual routine is thrown off as the police have started to tear apart their shelter, looking for SAM. Turns out a secret code has been implanted inside him thanks to Tina’s dad, when she was just a baby. What’s the code for? Why this particular robot? Where is Tina’s dad? All questions we’re looking to answer in the game. To spur us on even more the evil Mayor Rumpf is the one behind the search and will do anything to get his hands on SAM and destroy the code.
Story-wise it doesn’t really hit any new ground, but where it covers similar territory with a good v bad foundation, Encodya rises above it with it’s heart. Tina and Sam have lived 9 years side by side so know each other inside and out, and their relationship is always front and centre, and it’s a strong partnership that pulls the game through. Sam is a huge metallic creation with adorable asymmetric eyes and slow low calming voice, where Tina has a teeny child body with a huge head, albeit due to the helmet she wears throughout, and her voice a tad squeaky. Life on the streets has toughened her up some so she’s not the annoying wet behind the ears child that any normal 9 year old may be. There’s an ease between the two that settles the game down quickly, regardless what dangerous adventure they may be about to go on.
The game is split into 5 chapters, however it’s more a game of 2 halves. In the first we’re traipsing around the dirty crowded streets of a noisy Neo-Berlin with it’s tangled cables, neon, heavy rain and almost noirish vibes, populated with all kinds of characters including different robots, cyber-junkies and more colourful oddities. In stark contrast we spend the other half inside the calming idyllic green pastures of Cyberspace, with random mechanical parts poking through.
The scenery of the entire game is simply stunning. It really felt like Neo-Berlin was a sprawling metropolis that had eaten up different cultures from years gone by. There are quite a few locations here ranging from the general town square, back alleys, run down hotels and marketplaces and they all felt lived in. There’s a handy map that opens up meaning you don’t have to spend an age walking from one part of the city to another but really, I enjoyed looking at the backgrounds a lot so often walked. The characters who randomly walk around also look super cool. But the characters we have to interact with on the other hand, are a mixed bag.
The character design I think, could split opinion. The backgrounds of the game are meticulously designed and plainly, gorgeous, yet the people are almost manga-esque. I don’t dislike them, in fact, I find the majority of them perfectly fine, but a few seem to miss the mark, and it just so happens that the main antagonist, Mayor Rumpf, is one of them. He just makes the whole game feel less believable, maybe more of a joke perhaps? He also lets the game down in personality and character. Apart from him being "the bad guy", he’s paper thin. He has his reasons for trying to capture SAM, but it feels almost like an afterthought. He’s an obvious caricature of former president Donald Trump, but I think the developers went a little too far in parodying him that they forgot to give him his own identity. On the other hand, he, and the majority of the cast, perform great voice acting which elevates it more so, with the exception of just one or two.
The game is played at a fairly steady pace which I thoroughly enjoyed. Overall it took me 11 hours but like I said, a lot of that was just walking and looking. And there IS a lot of walking, maybe too much sometimes. We often have to backtrack through several screens to perform what we need to to move the story forward, so in Neo Berlin, and in parts of Cyberspace we’re given a Map to fast-track. However, when we don’t have the map, it can be a slog. Tina and Sam always walk together and Sam seems to have a slightly slower walk. You can double click to make them run, and also double click off the screen to fast track to the next screen, but in smaller environments, like the apartment block, the camera angle is too tight to run across the entire floor, so you end up constantly stopping, then going. It’s a small bugbear but one that irked me somewhat. If we take a look at the game in terms of puzzles, we mainly use our inventory, some of which can be combined together. The controls are straight forward, as we hover over an item, there's usually a look icon, a pick up icon, a use, or a combination of the three, and use the left mouse button to select. From start to finish I can’t think of a time where I truly struggled to think how to complete a puzzle, but I DID have to reach for a walkthrough no less than 4 times, and every single time it was because I hadn’t picked something up yet. Here’s my main gripe of the game.
A lot of the inventory you find is simply lying around, and some is camouflaged into the background too much. Every time I used the walkthrough, I always had an inkling about what I needed to do, but searched high and low for what I thought I might need, only to come out empty handed, so headed to the walkthrough to find out what I was doing was absolutely right, but the piece I needed was just lying in a dark room, amongst dark backgrounds, with no clear sign anything was there, or even worse, looking for a piece of rope, amongst a very heavily designed tree, full of vines. It really did frustrate me. There are 2 options to play this game, easy, and normal, and being the seasoned veteran of adventure games that I am, I obviously picked the hard route, but if I’d have picked the easier route, I would have had to option to use the hotspot finder that shines a faint light around these items. Also, in the harder version you don’t get the option of hints, but in the easier one, you can ask Sam what you should be doing, however the responses from him can be vary vague leaving still much to work out.
I also thought they missed a trick to use both Tina and Sam together. Not once do you need to make them work as a team. You can pick and choose either at any point in the game, as they’re always together, so there might be a character that refuses to speak to robots, so we shift to Tina, or possibly an item high above us, so we switch to Sam to get it, but never once can we use them as one. I thought maybe the option to have one do one thing, whilst the other simultaneously does something else, could have made for a more complex puzzle design because, as it stands, although the puzzles are good, they aren't great. Mostly it’s a case of find three things to make something so the story moves on, then the next part is find three other things to do something else. And repeat. My final annoyance is there were simply one too many 4th wall breaking moments. Too many times is there an in-joke that we’re playing a game. It’s funny once, but not twice, or indeed three or four times, it took me out of the game.
So that’s all my complaints out the way. Let me tell you this. Encodya, is a very fun, entertaining game.
Alongside the gorgeous visuals, the ethereal music couldn’t be more perfect. It’s almost a constant wave of sound that washes over the scenes unnoticed, but as part of the larger canvas, is a major player. It helped the world felt real, it’s as simple as that. As an added bonus there are ten ‘hidden’ secrets that you can unlock. It’s totally needless but for the completionists out there it's an added extra, but they can be very well hidden. I managed to discover just four of them.
Encodya is a journey that evokes feelings. There are references to politics, drugs and death, but it’s a modern adventure game, what do you expect, a sociopathic pirate? Sam-53 and Tina are two very loveable guys, and although the story was solid, it never truly matches the aesthetics. I wanted to love Encodya, and I almost did, but with a wet lettuce as the antagonist, and some niggling puzzle issues, it reaches far, but falls just short. I didn’t love Encodya, I only really, really liked it.
If you're an adventure game fan, head on over to my dedicated Adventure Game facebook group, The Point and Click Adventurers, to join hundreds more adventure game fans. And finally if you can, please consider supporting me on Patreon to help me create even more adventure game blogs, videos and more.
Get your copy of Encodya from Fanatical!
Comments