I’m really liking the resurgence of the whole point-and-click adventure genre. Games like The Journey Down and the reimagined Shadowgate proof the genre can still offer an immersive experience. What could be wrong with some clever puzzles to drive a thrilling story. Trüberbrook tries to be up to par with the newer additions and classics like monkey island and day of the tentacle in mind.
Sci-fi in Germany
Dr. Hans Tannhauser won a trip to Trüberbrook, a quiet village in rural Germany, far away from the everyday rush a quantum physicist is in. The doctor doesn’t quite remember entering a lottery but the change in pace comes at the right time to not worry too much about it. Once settled in pension Waldeslust, Hans gets a uninvited visit during the night. The thief stole the paper he’s writing on quantum theory. Retrieving the paper becomes the catalyst for a sci-fi adventure about ghosts and aliens in the most peculiar settings while meeting the strangest inhabitant of Trüberbrook.
Breath-taking art style
The visual style offered with Trüberbrook is just fantastic. All due to the developers really going the distance when it came down to making everything look as real as possible. The backgrounds were first made as real miniature models. A 3D scanner digitised everything. Finally some digital effects and added digital models were added. The extra effort to go for hyper realism really shows. The contrast with the more comically looking characters might break up the realism but this didn’t bother me at all.
Point-and-click light
A good point-and-click adventure needs a good story, which I will address in a moment, and good puzzles. The puzzles in Trüberbrook are not the hardest if you’re a veteran of the genre like me. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as not everyone is looking for the next “dark souls” of point-and-click adventure games. But the way the mechanics are implemented to solve the puzzles makes it almost obsolete to really think about what you’re doing. The game doesn’t allow you to use your inventory on things it’s not meant for. This game fills in the blanks for you if you have gathered the right items. As a result the puzzle solving is essentially reduced to just finding the items.
More time to focus on the story
When a point-and-click adventure loses the ability to captivate you with its puzzles, the story better be good enough. Without giving away spoilers, Trüberbrook does offer a fun story. The many quirky characters had me laughing. In contrast the story left many gaps which needed filling in my opinion. I felt the story needed a bit more meat to really be worth playing through. To me it felt like the game had to be rushed or the budget didn’t permit a more worked out version of the story. I had fun exploring the mysteries in Trüberbrook but I wasn’t as captivated as with most other point-and-click adventures.
Conclusion
Despite the extremely beautiful visual style, Trüberbrook doesn’t quite do it for me as a veteran of the genre. With about 5 to 6 hours of gameplay to complete the game and considering the easy puzzle solving presented here, Trüberbrook might be a good starter point-and-click adventure for the uninitiated.
