The Secret Of Retropolis review: a noir adventure in VR

Yesterday night I have tried The Secret Of Retropolis, a VR game inspired by LucasArts’s point and click adventures developed by indie studio Peanut Button.

The studio is composed of three developers that say they have no money for marketing and need help promoting their game. This looked like a job for the SkarredGhost, who always loves and supports indie developers. That’s why I tried it, and since I’ve found it a very nice game, I want to tell you my experience with it!

(WARNING: as I always highlight in every review of mine, I won’t do big spoilers, but to review it I have to unveil some details of the game… you have been warned!)

Story

I don’t want to spoil anything of the cool story, so let me just copy-paste the description of the studio:

The story takes place in Retropolis, a city inhabited by robots left behind to keep the human past alive. The player will become protagonist Philip Log, an ex-cop hired by a famous robotic movie star for a shady job. Very soon Philip will find himself uncovering the secrets behind a conspiracy that puts the very fate of Retropolis in jeopardy.

The story is a very relevant part of this game. With the plain old point-and-click adventures, it was cool playing them to solve the enigmas, to have fun, but also to discover how the story could unfold. In the Secret Of Retropolis, there is an intriguing story with clear noir vibes, and the game will keep you wanting to discover how it could end.

I warn you that the story won’t end. I can make this spoiler because for the duration of the game is impossible to unfold a full story, so it is obvious that it should go on in the future chapters. This is an App Lab game with the developers clearly saying they plan to get money and support to develop the full application, so I expected since the first moment that this couldn’t end. In this version of the Secret Of Retropolis, there are only the first 2 chapters of the game, and they will be enough to keep you hooked and wanting for more at the end.

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Gameplay

I could probably just finish this paragraph by saying “it is a point and click adventure”, but since I like to write a lot, I will go deeper in more details :D.

The game is comprised of environments in which you have to solve riddles and cutscenes that bridge the various scenes together. In every environment, you have some enigmas to solve to reach some goal (e.g. “grab that object”), and when you solve it, you see a cutscene, usually with the main character moving with his flying car from one place to another, until you arrive at another place where you have to achieve a new goal. Rinse and repeat until the end of the game. This is very similar to the structure of point-and-click adventures.

Every environment is self-enclosing, in the sense that you are there and you have to solve the enigmas with elements that are all in that place, or with objects that are already in your inventory. We can so say that the story is very linear: it is not like in Monkey Island where you had to visit various parts of a map, and use in one place the objects you found in another one. Here it is more as if every environment were an escape room itself.

To solve the enigmas you have to:

• Analyze elements in your surroundings, looking around you at 360° (e.g. to find a phone number you can use)
• Activate objects that are around you (e.g. activate a switch to turn on electricity)
• Grab objects and put them in your inventory
• Take two objects within your inventory and combine them to have a new item
• Take objects within your inventory and use them with something you have around you
• Talk with NPCs

To interact with an element around you just point your controller towards it and then press the trigger button. The same mechanic is also used to put elements in an inventory or to make two objects interact between them. Pointing and clicking is the only thing you will do in this game.

The enigmas you find are never too difficult: only like two times in the whole game I had to think a little more than I expected, but I never got desperate. In any case, the game also helps you a lot, with the character you embody giving you clear cues of what you have to do when he speaks. I found the game very smooth in this sense, but honestly speaking I would have probably liked to be challenged a bit more.

The dialogues with NPCs are pre-scripted, and you can choose what to tell them from a little selection of options. Usually, most of the options are useless and are just there to trigger funny lines that make the game more enjoyable (like in old point-and-click adventures). But at a certain point, I had to make a choice where the two possible answers I could give had different colors, and that changed what happened later on in the story. So I guess that in the full version of the game it will also be possible to alter the story depending on the dialogues that you have.

This version of the game is made of two episodes, and you can play the second one only after you have completed the first one. After the second one, you access a bonus area where you can see some sketches and 3D models of the game, a photo of the developers, and a scene selection menu where you can re-play some scenes of the game you particularly liked.

My total game time has been more than 1 hour.

Multimedia elements

I have appreciated a lot the graphics of this game. Most of the elements have been modeled on Quill, and so the game appears as it had been drawn by hand by someone, like if you were inside an old-school cartoon, and it is overly cool. It fits well the retro style of the game, which is enhanced by nice details like the fact that the lights are shaded through dithering, like artists used to do in old point-and-click adventures. The graphical elements are very well designed and the overall visual aspect of the game is nice. There aren’t many details in the assets, first of all, because the elements that are drawn with Quill usually have not textures but only colors, and then also because it is a game that should run on Oculus Quest, so graphics can’t be very detailed.

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Also audio is very well made. I was particularly surprised for instance to hear a piece of very good music also in a scene where I was in a club and there were people singing on the stage. The song was chosen carefully to fit the mood of the game, and it went on and on until I solved the riddle there. This soundtrack gave me exactly the feelings I should have felt if I were there in that club in real life, it felt so romantic, so noir. I loved it.

Accessibility

I have to give big kudos to Peanut Button for how they designed some parts of the interactions of the game, because they have been conceived so as to be effective, immersive, and also accessible.

First of all, the game is to be played seated. All the time you are comfortably seated on your chair and the only thing you have to do is pointing and clicking. This avoids you to become tired by staying up all the time to play a game that is mostly static, but it is even more important for people that are in a wheelchair and so can play this game without any issue. And since the game just requires pointing and clicking with a controller, it can be played also by people with movements problems at the arms and fingers.

Another cool accessibility option is the ability to enable subtitles: I enabled them because as a non-native English speaker, I prefer having them always on, but of course, they can help all people that have hearing impairments to play the game as well.

UX

Some of the interaction choices that Peanut Button has taken are really smart.

Let’s start for instance from the basic interactions: how to make a game that feels interactive and immersive when you should grab objects distant from you by just pointing and clicking? Well, since you are a robot, everything is possible: your hand is connected to your wrist by a sort of spring, so when you have to catch an object that is distant from you, you just see your virtual hand moving fast towards that object while the spring stretches, then the hand that grabs the element, and in the end, you see it returning back to you with the object it. Since the game is cartoonish and the characters are all robots, your brain accepts more easily unrealistic stuff like this one and the game remains highly immersive. These stretchable arms are really a nice solution.

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The inventory is another smart element in the game. Since having a backpack or a belt would be weird to use while you are seated, the game provides you a moving suitcase, that always stays on the floor next to you. Inside it, you can put whatever object you want, and it becomes little when it is there inside. On the lid of the suitcase, there is also a hint on what you have to do at this point in the story, and this also acts as a constant reminder of what is your purpose in the environment you are in.

Immersion

This game sucked me in for all its duration: its nice graphics and sound, the interesting story, the noir vibes, the smart interactions… I played it in a single session, and when I removed the headset I was disappointed to find myself again in my bedroom. I think it’s well-conceived in everything: it is able to set a noir retro mood, a bit like in an old movie with Humphrey Bogart, and you feel completely immersed in it. The atmosphere is kinda sad, like in all noir movies, but the constant humor of the dialogues or the sentences that the character says when he interacts with objects help in making the game actually funny. I have to say that the jokes on Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual were funnier and sharper, but these ones are nice as well.

I think it also contributes to the immersion the fact that you can interact with many of the elements of the game: even if they are not useful, you will be rewarded by a (usually funny) sentence of the character you embody. Furthermore, many NPCs actually talk or interact with you, and this helps in giving you a stronger sense of presence.

Comfort

There is no locomotion in the game, so during the gaming scenes, you can’t feel any kind of sickness. But there are some cutscenes with the camera moving, and one of them causes a lot of dizziness, actually.

Price and availability

The Secret Of Retropolis is available on Steam and App Lab for 13€.

Final impressions

I really appreciated The Secret Of Retropolis: the game is fun, immersive, and has a nice story. It is also accessible and features very smart UX solutions. I really can’t find a great shortcoming about it: maybe its only problem is that for 13€ I would have expected it to last a bit more (at least 45 minutes more). Of course, it’s an indie title, so it has not super-detailed graphics, super deep dialogue trees, incredible sounds, complex enigmas, or other characteristics of AAA games, but to be the job of three developers, it is impressive.

It sucked me in for more than one hour, and in the end, when it finished, I wanted more. I really hope that Peanut Button will be able to create new episodes of this game, maybe also with a bigger budget. Of course, my advice is to buy this game to support this studio, because it is really well-made.

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Have you played The Secret Of Retropolis? What do you think about it by watching the trailer? Let me know your impressions in the comments here below (and don’t forget to also subscribe to my newsletter!)