German-based Backwoods Entertainment made a point-and-click adventure game back in 2018 named Unforeseen Incidents. Strangely enough, in some sense, it foretold the current events – at least the once at the start of the game – of a virus and a potential pandemic. With the game being ported to the Nintendo Switch I was able to have a go at it in current daylight which felt weird given the theme. Regardless of my personal sense of dreading anything having to do with pandemics I thoroughly enjoyed this game.
The handyman will fix it
Harper Pendrel is the hero of this story set in Yelltown. Harper is a college dropout who turned the town’s handyman because he likes to tinker with stuff. Going about his day-to-day life, Harper has awakened again to the realization Yelltown is in trouble. There has been a virus outbreak dubbed Yelltown fever. Anyone contracting it has almost no chance of surviving it. Despite the elephant in the room, Yelltown seems to still function as normal. Only when people get sick a privatized health company donning people in hazmat suits come to take them away. When Harper stumbles upon a dying woman he calls the emergency number but before the people in the hazmat suits come to take away the woman, she slips Harper a letter to deliver to a journalist. Intrigued, Harper sets out to find this journalist and discovers there is more to the epidemic than meets the eye. With the help of a befriended scientist, the journalist, and a reclusive artist Harper goes on an adventure to uncover the truth behind the Yelltown fever.
Classic point-and-click adventure
Unforeseen Incidents is a point-and-click adventure in a classical sense. Just trusty old mechanics that have worked for years in the genre are used in this game. You pick up everything that is not bolted down and talk to everyone. Along the way, certain things will hinder your progression at which point you’ll need to use your old noggin. Combine stuff from your inventory to interact with the problem and try to fix it. Be creative with what you have and if nothing seems to work, go look for the stuff you missed. Maybe talking to a certain person might wield another key item this time around. A good point-and-click adventure tries to find the exact balance between solutions being too straightforward or being too far out. I feel Unforeseen Incidents dit a great job of finding that sweet spot. As a veteran in the genre, I felt the puzzles were hard enough to give me a challenge without being too unlogical.
Different paths
I particularly liked the game not being too linear. Since there is only one solution to every problem these types of games can feel a bit guided. Unforeseen Incidents give you enough to do in each chapter (of which there are five). There are often multiple main “quests” that can be tackled. Because of it, you could easily stop pursuing a certain solution in the game to focus more on another avoided the dreaded sense of getting stuck. While finishing the other puzzle your inventory gets cleaned up leaving you with a clearer view of what to do with the problem you abandoned. The addition of “red herrings” (items not needed and intended to throw you off) thrown in the mix made me feel the developers really cared about the puzzle experience. It worked because I had loads of fun trying to get through the story.
Hand-painted and great characters.
These hand-painted backgrounds are just a sight to behold. These are just so detailed giving so much more depth to the game. The story is what keeps you going but subconsciously the artwork does a great job at keeping you tied to your console. The character designs were also neatly done although the limited movement contrasted a bit with the grandeur of the background. Speaking of characters… A point-and-click adventure is only as memorable as its characters and Unforeseen Incidents did a great job at concocting those. Every main character is relatable and stands apart from the background characters enough to stay memorable. Harper in particular is a very loveable character. Unforeseen Incidents tells a serious story but uses slightly exaggerated characters giving just enough comedic flavor. The voice acting adds so much to this. The actors used to deliver the lines did a great job.
Clickable
As always with these console ports of a PC game, we have to talk about the conversion a bit. The game runs smoothly and looks great both in handheld mode and on the big tv screen. The controls had to be adjusted to fit the controller. They kept it pretty much like it was on PC making it not so user-friendly to navigate in my opinion. The inventory menu didn’t always do what I was intending to do resulting in some frustrating moments. After a while, I got handier with the menu and it didn’t bother me all that much anymore. When playing in handheld modus you have the option to just use the touchscreen which is a far superior method to play Unforeseen Incidents. Much more intuitive but at the cost of not being able to play it on TV. I liked the fact they included a button to show all the things interactable on screen leaving out the “pixel-hunting” for that one missed item. I did miss a sort of log system to look back at what I’ve done or read back the conversations I had. This game takes about 12 hours so a recap to refresh your memory would’ve been welcomed.
Conclusion
Unforeseen Incidents deserve much love if you’re into point-and-click adventures. This is a great adventure in the classic form. Nothing ground-breaking but ultimately greatly made and enjoyable the whole way through.
