I finally talked myself into getting the game, bc I loved gemini rue and the two blackwell games that I have played so far, but I hated resonance and I was worried that technobabylon would be more like resonance. boy was I wrong technobabylon is my favorite adventure game that I played this last yr and I figured I would write a quick review just in case someone is on the fence like I was.
the puzzles are a lot of fun some of the best I have seen in a while, especially all the puzzles involving the trance, but there is one moon logic puzzle that seemed ripped right out of monkey island. without giving away too much its in the first quarter of the game and involves a coat hanger, but it is not a hard puzzle, and it made me laugh so I enjoyed it. Its almost like you put it in there for nostalgia reasons to other adventure games.
You switch between three characters (well really 4, but one is done in flashback scenes and there is no puzzle solving, just dialogue so I dont really count that, more like an interactive cutscene with that character.)The three main characters are Regis, Max, and Latha. Regis had the best storyline but prob the weakest voice actor, He is not bad but is the weakest link in the cast. Latha prob had my least favorite character arc, but she had the best voice actor and easily the best puzzles to me, so it balances out. one problem I did have with the game is very minor but it involves character development and since Im about to get into minor character spoilers im going to tag it.SPOILER INCOMING one of the characters named max turns out to be transgender, which is fine, but the way they do it, just was strange to me. the player finds out this information in a throw away line, as to say in the future being transgender is not such a huge deal which to me is an awesome message, but it just really feels shoehorned in, bc it adds nothing to her character, and it also takes nothing away. basically it feels like a subplot that never took off and left the runway. Other than that and a few other nitpicks I found the writing to be superb, especially when it comes to world building and pacing. the author of this piece reminds me a little of Jane Jenson aka the woman who created the gabriel knight series. He reminds me of her in how the world building is done. while I think Jane's character dialogue is sometimes cheesy and cliched, her world building is some of the best in gaming. how she combines fiction with non fiction elements in history is next to none, and I see that same type of skill with whoever wrote this adventure game. Just really top notch world building, the city of Newton felt like a real breathing city, and that has equal to do with the art design as well as the writing.
I normally dont comment on music but it is fan friggin tastic. everything about it makes you feel like you are in a cyber punk future. The animations and background designs are also top notch. this is a very minor spoiler and I believe was shown in a trailer so im not going to tag it. At the start of the game a character I will say "leaves" a window in a building and falls 26 stories onto a car and the animation even though is pixel art, looked amazing here, I felt the impact and the brutality of it, even though you cant really see what happened bc of said pixel art.
I could gush on and on about this game, definitely my favorite adventure game that I played within the last yr, maybe even longer than that, I got to think about it for a while . 9/10
