Wadjet Eye Technobabylon by Wadjet Eye

[Outlander]

50% off on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/307580/

:D

 

[Bubbles]

It was 75% off on GOG two months ago.

 

[evdk]

It was 75% off on GOG two months ago.

GOG does not help to raise my steamcount, FFS.

Spoiler

Also the game was good enough to warrant the release price, you misers.

 

[Outlander]

This is in the new HumbleBundle for 1$!!!!:

https://www.humblebundle.com/humble-gems-bundle

 

[MRY]

I thought the child suicide bomber was a white Texan?

 

[DaveGilbert]

Here's another missed opportunity with the social justice angle. The player discovers early on that the sidekick is a MtF trans but he never realized, since future technology. Later in the game, there is a puzzle where you explore a crime scene for evidence and use that to eliminate suspects from the pool. One piece of evidence is that the culprit has XY chromosome. It would have been very clever puzzle design, and a huge validation of the social justice message, if the game had allowed for wrong answers if the player incorrectly eliminated a trans based on that piece of evidence. But that didn't happen.

I don't usually leap in to defend our own work, but I will in this case. This was brought up during production. It's established that the surgical procedure in the game changes you at the genetic/cellular level, so it wouldn't have made a difference.

Back to lurking. As you were.

 

[RuySan]

Finished this one yesterday and liked it very much. Not as good as primordia but better than other wadjet eye games.

The puzzle difficulty was right for the most part, but got stuck right in the last few puzzles, specially because I didn't notice there was an extra floor in the last elevator.

Liked the characters, and the setting was familiar but having a few twists to not feel tired (it's a welfare state and not a neo-liberal dystopia, and that's refreshing even for a leftie commie like me).

 

[Jools]

Finished this one yesterday and liked it very much. Not as good as primordia but better than other wadjet eye games.

The puzzle difficulty was right for the most part, but got stuck right in the last few puzzles, specially because I didn't notice there was an extra floor in the last elevator.

Liked the characters, and the setting was familiar but having a few twists to not feel tired (it's a welfare state and not a neo-liberal dystopia, and that's refreshing even for a leftie commie like me).

Have you played Shardlight? If so, how does this one compare? TB has been sitting in my Steam Library for ages...

 

[Blaine]

Shardlight looks interesting, and it's post-apocalyptic which is always good, but I've heard tell that a decent chunk of the puzzles suffer from Old Man Murray Syndrome.

 

[Jools]

Shardlight looks interesting, and it's post-apocalyptic which is always good, but I've heard tell that a decent chunk of the puzzles suffer from Old Man Murray Syndrome.

Not sure about that syndrome, which I admit being ignorant about, but sure as hell the puzzles are piss-easy and the plot feels a bi shaky at times, especially towards the end. Still, I did quite enjoy the game's visuals, atmosphere, and writing. It is a very short game, I finished it in 6 hours so that's what you can expect to have wasted if you end up not liking it.

 

[RuySan]

If it's piss easy it probably doesn't suffer from the old man Murray syndrome.

Technobabylon had a borderline old Murray moment with the glowing fish puzzle, but it wasn't too bad

 

[MRY]

Overall, WEG's in-house titles aim for straightforward and predictable puzzles to avert the problem you discuss, so I don't think you'll find it frustrating. Everything I've read suggests that no one found the puzzles an obstacle, which can be a plus or a minus depending on your tastes.

 

[evdk]

Shardlight looks interesting, and it's post-apocalyptic which is always good, but I've heard tell that a decent chunk of the puzzles suffer from Old Man Murray Syndrome.

On the contrary, a solution to most of the puzzles is "shoot it with you fucking crossbow, dumbass"

 

[MRY]

Both Shardlight and Technobabylon are very inexpensive on GOG right now. (So's Primordia and the rest of the WEG back catalogue.)

 

[Tom Selleck]

I just got both (already had Primordia) so I've got my weekends planned.

 

[Infinitron]

Finished this yesterday. What an interesting game. I feel like it didn't hit its stride until after Latha's escape from CEL, when it becomes definitively about helping Regis while learning about his past. I didn't like how the game played before that, funneling you from scenario to scenario with lots of cutscenes before the stakes have been clearly established. Overall I feel like the game probably had more dialogue than it needed ("All right, let's climb the Fulcrum tower and end this!...or we can head right back into Vargas' office and explore three different dialogue trees.")

Also echo the other criticisms in this thread, but that's what bothered me personally.

But yeah, the hacking puzzles and all that stuff was definitely cool. Glad to see they're making a sequel, you could do a lot more with that. BTW I don't think anybody in this thread ever figured out that "Jinsil" the Arabic hacking lady in the Trance was Nina Jeong.

 

[evdk]

Glad to see they're making a sequel

yeahbutwhuh?

 

[Manny]

After almost a year away from playing games, I returned to it with Technobabylon. I bought it last year, because I had played the free episodes versions, and although I thought that the third one was really bad with its minigames, I really liked the first two, specially the second part. And, well, I didn't like it. Of all the games from the Wadjet catalogue I've played, I feel this and the last Blackwell are the worse. The only one I think is worse is A Golden Wake, but I haven't finished it yet.

What I liked? I liked the pace: as somebody said on a previous post, I think the change of characters is really well integrated and they move the story well. The world construction and the personality of the main characters were also interesting. The story has some nice moments here and there, and the graphic design and the music are top notch to my taste.

…but the dialogues, for christ sake, are terrible. They're affected and cliche almost all the time. I think I can live with that, but the worse is that they usually used to state obvious things regarding what the characters are doing or have to do. In my opinion, this is one of the sins of most modern adventure games, dating back to at least The Black Mirror. Together with this I didn't find the motivations of the characters believable, but I think that's rather subjective. In any case, that ruined the story for me in various parts.

I also disliked the fact that in various parts where crucial things are supposed to be happenging, the characters still take the time to talk about their past or about things that aren't important at that moment. That eliminates the plausibility of what's going on, making the game feel cringe worthy.

The puzzles range from mediocre to ok. Even those that could be great, weren't well implemented: too easy, too obvious. Almost all were just a formality. Regarding this, I think the possibilities of science fiction setting were wasted in this regard; same thing happens with the use of different characters at the same time.

Finally, two more things. First, Technobabylon has come up with (at least I haven't seen it before) a new form of taking away further agency from the player: regarding the way characters acquire a lot of the items. A lot of the items are given by another character without any reason, or characters just open something and take the items inside without the player even having to extra click or anything. And that's the only thing one needs to solve several of the puzzles presented. I'm not sure I'm explaining this well, but this and, second, the fact that the "rooms" are streamlined (another thing I dislike about modern adventure games) made my playing a boring experience.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

This is 75% off right now:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/307580/

 

[Alienman]

This is 75% off right now:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/307580/

Now I only need a Resonance discount.

When Wadjet?

 

[MRY]

My sense is that the sale cascade goes in order of WEG's percentage of the revenue, which I think leaves Resonance second to last before Primordia. I would guess something like Gemini Rue, then Resonance, then Primordia. Possible AGW before Primordia, not sure.

 

[Lithium Flower]

Finished this, and as someone who is generally shit at point-and-clicks (as in I typically resort to looking at online walkthroughs to guide me through most of the games) I enjoyed it. I would say it is on par with Gemini Rue and Primordia, which I also liked a lot. The world felt pretty coherent as opposed to a bunch of futuristic concepts thrown together. The "social justice stuff", as some have put it, was handled just fine - if there is one genre to explore the changing gender/societal dynamics, it would be cyberpunk, and I felt like the LGBT characters and multiracial couples weren't obnoxious and were in line with the rapidly changing world of Technobabylon (although if you see the evil postmodernist boogeyman in every corner, then I guess your mileage may wary). The puzzles were logical and straightforward, so a walkthrough wasn't needed...except for a certain part of the game where I seriously questioned its logic:

Spoiler

The investigation sequence where Charlie Regis is trying to figure out who collaborated with the suicide bomber. So the Traveller is apparently a futuristic super phone that is able to remotely operate an industrial laser, but lacks a flashlight function, so in order to light up a dark area you need to catch a fucking carnivorous glow-fish. Also, the letter we find in the same dark area eliminates the oligarch from Han as a suspect, the justification being that he couldn't have personally written the note because he can't write or read English (but as he says, his secretary can!). This is pretty stupid - it would make total sense to assume that whoever collaborated with the suicide bomber wouldn't have written the note themselves, as one would assume that things like handwriting recognition would be very advanced in the world of Technobabylon.

Also I may have missed a few things in the story, and was curious if anyone has any ideas as to the following:

Questions

1. Why did Central deny that the airship existed after the first encounter with the mindjacker?

2. This is a really minor thing, but who threw the bottle of wetware to Regis when he was hiding out at the abandoned factory? Regis points out that that it was one hell of a throw. My guess is that it was one of Nina's synth bodyguards, hence the superhuman throwing ability, but I was wondering if there was something that I missed.

 

[Alienman]

My sense is that the sale cascade goes in order of WEG's percentage of the revenue, which I think leaves Resonance second to last before Primordia. I would guess something like Gemini Rue, then Resonance, then Primordia. Possible AGW before Primordia, not sure.

Well I don't wanna come off as a cheapskate now, I did buy your game full price
If 10 euro is full price?

 

[MRY]

10 euros seems like overpaying. :D

 

[Alienman]

Really now? You are not selling your game a bit short?