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Genre: Adventure Developer & Publisher: Pirita Studios/Application Systems Heidelberg Released: February 18, 2021 Requirements: Windows 7/Windows10 Processor: 2 Ghtz Dual Core CPU minimum/2.6 Ghtz recommended Memory: 4 GB RAM minimum/8GB RAM recommended Graphics: 1024 MB VRAM DirectX: Version 9.0c Storage: 4 GB available space Sound Card: Compatible sound card with latest drivers
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By flotsam
Fancy a trip from Mars for an archaeological dig on the abandoned planet of Earth in the year 5000? Perhaps you’ll find some relics, maybe uncover an interesting Mummy or two, or even discover the legendary, even mythical, lost city of Mutropolis. You play as Henry Dijon, archaeologist, team member, and geek. Armed with a trusty trowel, no remains are safe from his investigations, no door will remain unopened. It might have been better had they been. A weird event and a kidnapping means a rescue is required, with an ancient Egyptian god in tow. Mutropolis provides around 10 – 12 hours of enjoyable point-and-click third person adventuring. You can put away the keyboard; the “I” for inventory button also mapped to my mouse wheel, and was far more user friendly when it came to opening and closing the inventory. Click to move, click to interact with items and characters, click to utilise inventory items. I didn’t play Unforeseen Incidents, Pirita’s earlier offering, but having checked out some screen shots there are distinct shades of the graphic style present here, particularly in the character modelling. Whilst that had an overall darker tone, the elongated design is apparent in Henry and his colleagues. It appealed to me, and the long arms must be particularly useful for getting into those bottomless inventory pockets. Explore the game world with your mouse, and the curser will spin when you move it over an item you can interact with. You don’t choose what to do; just click and an action will occur. Henry might open a backpack for instance, after which there is further rummaging to be done, or he might simply pick it up. He might make an observation, suggesting perhaps there is something else you need to use. Its quite straightforward, and I didn’t think the lack of player choice (look, take, use etc) detracted from the endeavour. Clicking a character will initiate a conversation, sometimes with many available topics. Needless to say, some of these will be critical, and many won’t. Most of it is worth the time taken to ask about it, even if just for the possibility of some amusing banter. The fact that the voice acting is top notch is a further reason to be garrulous. Ok, maybe not a reason, but it certainly makes a palpable contribution to the enjoyment factor. I don’t recall anyone being a dud, or even close. There was though a dud puzzle or two, and whilst I am always prepared to acknowledge dudness can be in the eye of the beholder, as well as a product of missing a clue or two, you will never convince me that the pixelated sequence with the robot Max is anything but. I also wasn’t too enamoured with aspects of the dance sequence puzzle, although I confess there were some subtle hints which if picked up on made it a whole different dance. Indeed, the game deserves praise for the subtle, indeed intelligent, nature of many of the clues. The solution to enter the last room in the game is a prime case in point. It’s a mundane activity (open the door) made particularly good by its construction. It isn’t the only example. There is a lot of puzzling, largely inventory based, and taken as a whole it overwhelms the occasional puzzling misstep. I actually wonder whether I should have mentioned it at all – what game doesn’t have a dud puzzle here and there – but I can’t take it back now. The story is fantastical, and the hand drawn scenes are rich in cartoonish detail. There is a fairly linear path through the game, and triggers play a part in your progression. These will likely only be apparent when you are stuck, but there were times when I did the correct thing and yet the game didn’t move on as I needed to take an extra step to trigger that continuation. Again, you might get some feedback that makes that apparent. On one occasion Henry said something like, “do you know something I don’t,” clearly indicating that Henry needed to know something else, rather than the game simply accepting my random actions. An aspect which I also liked. You can’t highlight active items but I didn’t feel there was any pixel hunting involved. Just explore carefully and you should be fine. Based on what I have already said, the game rewards “careful” adventuring. Henry won’t run, but your curser will indicate an exit from your current scene and double clicking will jump Henry to the new location. The game screen can slide both left and right so make sure to walk Henry around. It sounds as good as it looks, and a quality soundtrack underpins the events. You can save at will and you won’t die. There is plenty to good adventuring to be had in Mutropolis. I played on: OS: Windows 10, 64 Bit Processor: Intel i7-9700K 3.7GHz RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR4 32GB Video card: AMD Radeon RX 580 8192MB
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