Welcomed by the lovely fellows from Artifex Mundi at their Gamescom booth, I got to play Irony Curtain, a game that will be available early 2019 and quite the different experience than other games from the Polish developer and publisher. One of the favorites from Dae Jim by the way for releasing many fun hidden word games on Xbox!
First I have something to admit, I’m not that great with point and click games. I know I should explore more genres but I tend to stick with shooters and racing games. Luckily I had to help Dae Jim out with his busy Gamescom schedule and experienced something refreshing and new! Irony Curtain is one of the few games that made me laugh because of the many reference to geeky things. No worries, I won’t be spoiling them all.
The story is about an American reporter who is going to investigate in Matryoshka. It is in an alternate timeline, where the cold war is still ongoing. It makes fun of all the prejudices we have about the communist regime, it won’t avoid some satirical stuff either. Even the title is a reference to the classic James Bond movie: From Russia with love. (Loved that movie)
I was only able the play a part of the 3rd chapter and a Artifex Mundi developer was kind enough to help me out a little. Nevertheless, I was a bit lost in the beginning, not used to the genre remember. I must say that the hand-drawn character design and the environment visuals where really good. You have to move around with your character, this is not like the most other Point-Click games.
The one puzzle that I had to solve, was a tough one for me. But once you get the hang of it, you are on your way. You had to recreate a shape but it wasn’t in a way that you would expect. As I was told this is something that Artifex Mundi is good at, making puzzles that requires some logical thinking.
I’m really eager to see the full version of the game and laugh with the many references they have put in. The game is coming to Steam, Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch in early 2019.