Apparently, it's indie/adventure game week having a plethora of games shown in recent Quicklooks from The Next Big Thing, Fancy Pants, Hector to Gemini Rue. It goes about saying that it's a great two weeks full of games that you actually want to play, having said that Mortal Kombat and Portal 2 (Conduit 2 also) came out the same day/week. I rarely played a indie game, much less an adventure game before really and from what I gathered through these indie games is that two of them; Hector and Gemini Rue plays on the fact that they are emulating the SCUMM engine, making it look more like the LucasArts games back then. The main difference between those two is that Gemini Rue won 2010 winner of the Independent Game Festival Student Showcase.

Created by Wadjet Eye Games which was first creating flash/browser based games now turned into PC game, Gemini Rue is a cross between Blade Runner (having that 40s era detective mixed into the future) and old LucasArts adventure games like Fate of Atlantis. Which reminds me of how annoying people continue try to reference Blade Runner in some way - I get it, it's cool having a no-nonsense detective in the future being like Blade-Runner but I think it's getting too overused and old in video games. This first impression of making it like Blade Runner was disappointing to me and having a moody and film noir over the game gives mixed thoughts about how the direction is going. Vinny and Ryan showed off the game for the Quick Look.


Anyways, it's basically a old point and click adventure game featured in the SCUM engine and even the graphical detail looked retro like those old LucasArts games. From the interface, control wise to even the interaction with the NPCs but being retro to old adventure games has its faults - control wise, from what I understand in the Quick Look it seems like you have to toggle what sort of action to interact with the environment/npcs making it a hassle if you use want to talk to the NPC and not kick him. The toggle menu to interact with things seems unnecessary, it does do the previous action that you had toggled earlier but backing back to this sort of menu and choosing the action that you want to interact with is a pain; the menu has its usual look/eye, interact, use and a kick/boot option that's hilarious in scenarios. 





An adventure game had to go with a great story and Gemini Rue has a decent storyline. It seems like the Boryokudan (say that name three times!) crime syndicate is the main conflict of interest in this game, you playing as a ex-assassin turned cop, Azriel who is trying to find his brother and constantly fighting to regain his memory and interconnect with proceed into the bigger picture. You start off as Delta-Six (not COD), trapped in a stellar prison where people get their memory erased or something then flashed to Azriel where he is trying to find  Matthias. This sort of storyline been done before and it felt derivative to make a concept like finding your long lost brother in a bleak future. The story doesn't impress me of having something unique like most adventure games have.


Puzzle wise, it's a redeeming factor for this game - playing in the LucasArts convention of interacting with something and that item can be used to interact with that other thing as every item is useful for something in this game... something. What really interested me is the terminals found in the game - in a bleak future, you have to have an ID to activate a terminal and this feature seems impressive. What really impressed me is how it looks basic but utilizes a drag-and drop for key words that you can drag to the search engine/bar and get your results, in some adventures games you have to go through a rigorous task of typing the thing that you need to know but in this game, you just drag and drop the word into the search engine and you just get the results. It wonders why in the future that they finally possess that sort of wonderful technology! The puzzle solving from what I seemed in the Quick Look is the main difference for retro adventure games, it doesn't look like it's difficult to solve puzzles in this game, you just find a random object that can be useful later on. Items such as the ID card that the vendor gave you earlier for the terminal is temporarily (though optional) so that the vendor would not get into trouble. 


The voice acting is also crucial in adventure games and from what I gathered in the Quick Look. The voice acting is disappointedly bad in some cases, it feels like they had gather people from the Voice Acting Alliance to voice the characters in the game. Sure there's some voice actors that are good like the main character Azriel, your friend, Kane and the female robotic/computer voice but the background characters are mediocre and terrible with trying to voice act. It surprises me why this game won an award because having a dedicated voice cast is integral to adventure games and this felt like they are either overdoing those lines in the dialogue or lacking in giving emotional and life to the characters. 


 The environment had a sort of FFVII backdrop though pixelated more 
 The environment had a sort of FFVII backdrop though pixelated more 



The environments and graphical fidelity is hand-drawn to generated pixel-art making it feel retro to point-and-click. The hand-drawn background constantly reminds me of both Grim Fandango and Final Fantasy VII but instead of 3D models in a 2D backdrop, it's 2D models/spites in a 2D realistic-looking backdrop. It's a constant reminder of "hey remember how games look like this" and how it goes with the whole cool trend of "film-noir" stylized in a bleak future. With the dark and dirty places you go to and the fact that it's constantly raining all the time.


I'm a tad skeptical about this game, it's a neat indie project that mostly favours me into the puzzle portion of the game but story and specifically voice acting wise, it's not selling me much on that. I just wish the voice cast wasn't comprised of mediocre to bad voice actors gathered from the Voice Acting Alliance that seriously lingered in flash/browser on the internet. And the storyline leaves to be something, undesired for having a stereotypical setting with a derivative plot of loss identify and finding a long-lost brother. This is probably the reason why it doesn't get the praise, it deserves. Hopefully their next project won't be fulled with these issues and problems of Gemini Rue that I could probably purchase a game that considered my first indie game.