Following Freeware: November 2014 releases
A Date in the Park
After their excellent full-length title Mudlarks, Cloak and Dagger Games have released a new, shorter adventure called A Date in the Park. The game stars Lou, who has just moved to Lisbon where he meets a nice lady named Catarina. Lou doesn’t speak a word of Portuguese and is happy he’s found a friend who speaks fluent English. They agree to meet the next day near the duck pond in the Tapada das Necessidades. Lou arrives a bit early, and after having found the pond before Catarina arrives, he sets out to explore the beautiful park. Things start to get weird when he returns to the duck pond and finds a box there, addressed to him. Upon opening it, Lou learns that Catarina is playing hide-and-seek, and he delightedly sets out to find her. His search soon reveals some strange things, however, such as pigeons in a feeding frenzy, an agitated gardener, and a mother duck trying to kill its duckling, amongst others.
A Date in the Park contains some horror elements that make it unsuitable for children, but it also features a beautiful environment, rich sounds and a simple but likeable story. Though the game takes place in a real setting and photos have clearly been used for the backgrounds, the graphic resolution is quite low, and the somewhat pixelated look takes away some of the feeling of immersion. The sounds are quite well done; you hear birds singing and ducks quacking and the drone of traffic in the background. You don’t hear footsteps when someone is walking, however, and I missed other obvious sounds as well, like rustling leaves or rattling gates when Lou tries to open them. There is no music or voice acting. All text is displayed in oblong boxes, with a different color for each character. At the beginning of the game, Lou babbles a lot about how lucky he feels to have found Catarina and what he likes to do with her (nothing sexual or kinky). His gabbing holds up the game a bit but he later grows less talkative and the gameplay gets smoother.
Presented in third-person, A Date in the Park is played using both mouse buttons to observe and interact. Lou walks where you click, and hotspots are indicated by their labels at the bottom of the screen. Exits are clearly indicated to show that Lou can walk to another screen, but some screens scroll, so be careful to explore everything. When the cursor is moved to the top of the screen the inventory appears. The puzzles are varied and not too hard, fitting nicely into the story. Along with standard inventory puzzles, you have to find the origin of a certain sound and get a mechanical contraption to do what you want by twiddling its knobs. The ending leaves many questions unanswered, and despite the effort that has evidently been put into this game, I couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed that it didn’t meet the same high standard as the developer’s previous release.
A Date in the Park can be downloaded from Cloak and Dagger’s website.
The Long Ass Walk
The Long Ass Walk is IndieRetroWolf’s contribution to the Oceanspirit collection of games. It’s a short but very funny text adventure about Dennis McOrdinary, a lad who works as a livestock inseminator on his parents’ farm. On the morning of his 18th birthday, Dennis is told by the Questgiver to travel to Moredoors and slay the last Oceanspirit. On his way there, Dennis gathers a Pimp Mage, a Princess and Norc McWarrior as his companions. They fight a lot of battles (of which the player learns nothing but the fact that they were fought) and Dennis discovers some interesting things about his companions on his way.
The game is presented in plain black text against a white background, complemented by very simple pixel art pictures of Dennis and the other characters he encounters. (Oddly, thanks to one strategically placed pixel, Dennis in the nude looks more like a young girl than a boy.) The game contains no music, voice acting, or sound effects at all. What actually happens on the group’s journey is not nearly as important as the way this short story is told and the many naughty sexual jokes that are crammed into it. You are warned about those jokes when you begin, so you can’t say you didn’t know they were coming!
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