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Probably the most fascinating thing about Unforeseen Incidents is the way the context surrounding its subject matter has shifted so dramatically since its original release in 2018. Outside of that, it's a solid point-and-click adventure game that does a few innovative and refreshing things but also falls into the same classic pitfalls the genre is known for.

Point and click fever

Unforeseen Incidents is an adventure game in which you play as a handyman named Harper who lives in a town beset with a mysterious illness known as Yelltown Fever. It is unclear what brought the illness about, but it is deadly, has no known cure, and has set off quite a bit of civil unrest.

Suffice it to say, some things happen in Yelltown that set you on a quest to discover the mysterious origins of the fever. The only thing standing in your way is a set of puzzles that largely involve the quintessential task of finding, combining, and/or exchanging items with your environment and the game's cast.

Pre-pandemic pandemic

The overall story in Unforeseen Incidents has plenty of twists and turns, and–given that since its release a global pandemic has actually ravaged this planet due to widespread political failures–it all bends into a narrative arc that feels like it comes from another universe. Without giving anything away, the big reveal of the Big Bad Conspiracy at the end almost reads as hopeful compared to what has happened in real life. It's still bad, but arguably better than what we got (complete denial and apathy).

All along the way, Unforeseen Incidents is a treat of clever writing and character quips. Even in these one-liners, exposition points, and incidental dialog, there's an interesting throughline about community tribalism with implications that I'm not sure I agree with, but feels like something the writers were intentionally going for while writing some legitimately funny jokes. I am not sure I can say something like this about a lot of other games, though I wish I could!

A practical man wants practical solutions

What excited me most about Unforeseen Incidents when I first started playing it was its down-to-earth puzzle design. In addition to its tasks being somewhat straightforward, they all also felt in line with Harper's character as a handyman. You start the game by fixing some wiring and eventually get to car repair and even radio triangulation. It's neat stuff that is all mechanically satisfying and tangible in a way that lets you always see what your next step needs to be.

Unfortunately, Unforeseen Incidents strays away from this kind of puzzle design for certain segments of the game and they just feel awful by comparison. There are hallucination sequences, vague directions, and–in the case of the game's final puzzle–sometimes both, and they lead to frustrating results. That final puzzle in particular is such a far cry from so many of the other puzzles in terms of practicality that I was convinced it was bugged. I almost wish it actually was, because I maintain that the solution is bullshit.

The bottom line

Will I let a few bad puzzles tarnish my entire perspective on this game? Well, yes. But I will also say that despite those glaring and frustrating flaws Unforeseen Incidents is quite enjoyable and has more to say than a lot of other adventure games I've played.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/review-270198/

I've been playing and writing about mobile games for long enough to remember a time where there were essentially no good controllers available for the platform and few–if any–PC and console releases coming out on the App Store. All of that has changed, of course, and we're now at the point where it feels like there's a new clutch of ports coming out every week or two. There seems to be an interesting knock-on effect with all of these non-mobile games coming to the App Store: mobile ports are getting less and less mobile-friendly.Children of Morta is definitely part of this trend. Despite otherwise being a serviceable dungeon-crawler, so many aspects of this game were clearly not tuned with mobile in mind in 2019 and weren't subsequently tweaked for this 2024 re-release on the App Store.

Crawling chronicles

Children of Morta is a fairly run-of-the-mill roguelite dungeon-crawler at its core. You choose a level, choose a hero, and try to get as far as you can without dying. Along the way you find all kinds of collectibles and currencies, some of which empower your character for that run only and others that can unlock persistent upgrades to make future runs easier.

Where this game chooses to forge its identity is in its lore and storytelling. Each character in Children of Morta is part of a family (The Bergsons), and this family is fighting off ancient evils that threaten the land both through adventuring to awaken gods that can help them, and also through their own camaraderie. This shows up through different vignettes between dungeon runs and also sometimes during them. Some of these narrated sequences simply act to introduce some new upgrade treadmill you've unlocked, but others just help to give dimension to the world and its characters or even offer up some bespoke setpiece. It's a nice touch that keeps its run-based nature from feeling so nakedly repetitive.

Mobilized mess

When I first fired up Children of Morta on my iPad, I quickly realized two things. First, there is no way the touch controls (with zero customization options, by the way) are up to the task of allowing me to overcome this game's default difficulty curve. And second: It's pretty difficult to see a lot of little things on the screen that can make or break an entire run–even on one of the larger iOS displays available!

As a result, I spent the vast majority of my time with the game playing with a controller and training my eyes to pick up on smaller traps or attacks that come from underneath you. This mostly solved the problems, though I still found myself having some runs end abruptly for reasons that are still not apparent to me. The whole experience felt very much like just playing a console or PC game on a mobile device, which–while cool in its own ways–is a compromised experience. Simply give me a bigger screen (or even resolution options of some kind?) and Children of Morta is suddenly a much more enjoyable game.

A battle of bugs

Beyond the apparent lack of considerations for bringing Children of Morta to smaller screens, there are bugs in this version of the game that are pretty annoying to deal with and some other pain points that make it feel even more compromised than it already is. The main offenders here are a bug that sometimes cuts the audio of the game to the point that an entire cutscene plays with no sound and also no subtitles, for some reason. There's also an issue where the game pauses every time you unlock a Game Center achievement.

Outside of bugs, it would be nice if Children of Morta was able to save the state of a run somehow if the app crashes or you have to spend some time away from the game doing something else with your device, but that is sadly not a feature here. Nor is the multiplayer that is present in other versions of the game, though there is a menu item indicating that it should be making its way to the game at some point.

The bottom line

Despite all these issues, I still enjoy playing Children of Morta. It is very far from anything I would call a great experience, but there's enough going on in its combat design and storytelling that I feel compelled by it. Just know that if you do pick it up you'll have to wade through a lot of compromises, unless… you know.. you just buy it on some other platform.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/review-270219/