Is there anything more terrifying than an invisible enemy? A toxin that seeps into the population with almost 100% fatal consequences? Was this an accident, or is it just Unforeseen Incidents?
Unforeseen Incidents is made by Backwoods Entertainment. The opening panoramic of lush forest followed by a run down town of 3 story buildings sets the scene, complete with voice over from the local radio station. They’re discussing the unfortunate breakout of a virus dubbed Yeltown fever. The mayor jumps on the station to declare that ‘all is well and under control’. Slowly we head into a ramshackle house where we meet Harper Pendril, a 20-something unemployed handyman, asleep on his mattress, on the floor. Spread around him are bits and pieces of tech half broken, and his windows boarded up with cardboard. Suddenly the phone rings to wake Harper up, and the local professor needs help with his laptop.
Harper is kind of a happy go lucky chap who, even though in the early stages he laments his dead mother and her boyfriend, he quickly papers over these feelings with small jokes and wit. This beanpole of a guy is the one who will one day help break open a huge conspiracy. But I’m getting a head of myself.
The town we wake up in, our home, is in fact Yeltown. On our way to help the professor fix his laptop we can see it’s a run down, almost shantytownesque place. Once it could have been thriving, but bit by bit, the outside world has moved on, and little to no fund have made their way into the town. The one hotel there has a roof that’s falling off, and the junkyard is overflowing. But it’s home.
The professor, Professor MacBride, a man in his mid 50’s, is trying to discover a vaccine for the virus. He’s jolly, but not jovial. There’s definitely some dark parts to his past I think. Once we’ve patched up the laptop, on our way back home a young woman is slumped against a wall, covered in blood and coughing. It’s Yeltown fever, and it’s made it’s way directly to our door. The RHC are the ones to call to help here but this girl want’s nothing to do with that. In fact, she’s strongly telling us to NOT call the RHC. And here is the start of a mysterious and terrifying jump into the cause of Yeltown fever, and our adventure. Along with professor MacBride, journalist Helliwell we help the cause and find out where the mystery goes.
So Harper. He’s a loner who likes to help, and he’s that guy that everyone knows, but no one really knows, you know? His moral compass is pretty straight and he gets what the difference between right and wrong is. He’s also a dab hand with the multi tool, which through the game comes in handy several times. Seeing as the subject matter gets pretty dark at times, occasionally his reactions lean towards comedy. It’s not that he’s joking about the matter at hand, rather that he might chime in with a witty quip that once or twice misses the mark. Apart from these few occasions, Harper is a genuinely nice guy to be around. The same can be said for both Professor MacBride and Helliwell. MacBride jokes with the best of them with humour dryer than the Sahara, but Helliwell seems to have left her sense of humour at home. She's a reporter dead set on uncovering the truth, and shoots straight as an arrow, sometimes willing to cross the legal line to get what she needs.
This threesome work together wonderfully. It’s all helped with some wonderful voice acting. Matthew Curtis brings Harper to life without going too far into tongue in cheek territory, and both Steve Fortune and Jessica Carroll give some weight to already well written characters in MacBride and Helliwell respectively. The dialogue written by Alasdiar Becket-King, who wrote the fantastic pirate comedy point & click Nelly Cootalot, never veers into comedy too much, which helps the world feel grounded and real.
Unforeseen Incidents is split into 4 very distinct chapters. Chapter one is set in Yeltown in what seems like late afternoon, Chapter two in the Greystone Woods National park at night, Chapter three in the more metropolitan Port Nicola full of trendy bars and bustling Harbour, and finally Chapter four, in a frozen abandoned ghost town. There are great secondary characters to meet in each chapter. In Yeltown the football-obsessed guys are very funny, in Chapter 2 both park Ranger Jervis with her over the top aggressiveness plays great against the nonchalant Harper. Add in the crazy hippie artist Cardero and it’s probably my favourite chapter. Port Nicola, although the most populated area, is probably my least favourite but the story really takes hold here as we uncover some deeper secrets, and finally the frosty barren chapter brings it all together, although there are less people here and those that are there, we spend little time with.
The point & click controls are simple enough, left click does it all. If you can interact with an item or person, your curser will turn to a small circle. The inventory is hidden away at the top and pops out if you hover over it. There are one or two items that also have sub menus. The multi tool is one such thing. Hover over the multi and another menu will drop down to let us choose between the tools knife, bottle opener, file, tweezers and more. It can be a little cumbersome here and more than once the second menu disappeared after I hovered too quick, or moved just off the menu slightly.
The way you can use items on screen could have been a little easier too. You have to hold down the mouse and drag the items to whatever you wish to use it on, whereas personally I’d have liked to have clicked on the item and it picks it up to use on the screen. It is a little complaint but I got over it pretty fast. A huge plus point is also there are a bajillion save spots, so go crazy.
The biggest plus point of the game is that it doesn’t hold your hand on the puzzles. Occasionally Harper will point us in the general direction of what we need to do, but more often than not we’re left to discover it ourselves. When I completed a puzzle there was genuine delight that I’d managed to figure it out.
The range of puzzles is pretty good too. There’s the usual point and click puzzles where we need to use a knife on a lock to open, but added in are also more detective style puzzles. We get given quite a bit to read throughout such as a diary, some flyers and pamphlets, receipts and more, and we have to really dive deep and cross reference these to move the story forward, but never do we read a part of something then Harper go "hmm, that seems relevant" because in real life, you wouldn't know it is until after it becomes clear what we need to do, and Unforeseen Incidents knows this too. I can’t think of a game in recent times that made me feel like a superhero for figuring out the code to a computer.
Between each chapter there’s also a hacking puzzle where you need to unlock files by figuring out the lines of a virus. It’s totally not needed yet it’s just another way to include some fun puzzles. There’s also a few small points where your choices make a difference. It doesn’t change the story, but you can make moral choices either way sometimes. I played through several parts twice to see how it plays out and it was worth it.
From the off I loved the art style too. Like a cross between a graphic novel and some concept sketches. It certainly has it’s own look. The characters also follow this aesthetic. I do have to question the way some faces are created though. It’s like a few faces have been forgotten and just scrubbed together at the last moment, namely Helliwell. I guess it does go with the comic book look, but it did get a little distracting and take me out of the story a few times. On that same issue, I have to say the walking cycles of most of the characters are, well, really bad. Harper aside, they all walk like Captain Scarlet just had a colonoscopy. It’s a great shame as at some pivotal moments, when there was a big reveal it was always punctuated by them walking away and instead of me investing in the incredible story, I was just thinking how lousy the walking was. Another minor annoyance was when speaking to a person, more often than not the screen zooms into their face, which on paper sounds like a good idea, except instead of having new animations for the faces, it seems to just zoom on the faces from the original scene, meaning they become quite blurry. It would be a lot of work to create each and every character close up so I get why it’s done like this.
I didn’t really notice the music throughout too much. For a game such as this I think that’s fine as it just added another layer to the nuanced canvas.
Unforeseen Incidents is a work of art in both plot, location and particularly the puzzles, with the final payoff just about working. Apart from the terrible walking animations, I really cannot fault it and would urge you to pick it up and discover it for yourself.
You can get a copy from Humble right here. Buying it from Humble helps out the developer, charity and myself, at the same cost as if you bought it from Steam.
Thanks to Application Systems Heidelberg for the review copy of the game too.
Finally, please come and join me and hundreds more adventure gaming fans on my Point & click Adventurers Facebook Group.
Michael
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