Aside from the fact it’s free on Steam and there’s not really much stopping you from playing it, despite maybe not having the right platform, Serena is a point and click adventure that can easily kill an hour of your time once you work your way into the game. It’s a game, a tech demo really, that brings us a mix of old and new. Old in the sense that you literally have to point and click as to where you want your protagonist to go, gone is the sense of free movement brought to us by the recent wave of adventure games, instead Serena giving you awkward cuts as to new portions of the map in the game’s restrictive one room setting. It’s pretty enough, with a few haunting music tracks and sound effects, with voice talent that works considering it’s an entirely volunteer effort. None of it is really amazing but none of it drags it down, either.
The “new” comes from the core gameplay mechanic Serena presents us with. If you’ve played a point and click game you’re used to the examination of objects and more importantly the reexamination, but often your interactions with said objects won’t change until you’ve advanced beyond the one puzzle the game wants you to complete. That’s where Serena differs; its progression is entirely dependent on how many times you take a close look at any one object inside your old little log cabin. The more you examine items, or go back and examine old ones, the more of the story is revealed.
The story is perhaps the most interesting part of the game, Serena’s plot is contained to the throes of a relationship, those floaty first interactions that grow stale over time and can even turn towards a twisted anger. However the real story behind Serena takes place outside of the game, you see the game is, at its core, a love letter… or rather a hate letter by the point and click adventure community over some ugliness that happened behind the scenes during the resurgence of the genre.
For the sake of brevity I’ll try to keep this to a paragraph, more detailed accounts of gossip available on other websites and not really where our focus is. After the success of point and click adventure crowdfunding campaigns such as the one for Broken Age and Leisure Suit Larry, a sort of renaissance was enjoyed by developers belonging to the community. Paul Trowe was seen as one of the champions of this resurgence, though by inside accounts he was far from the friendliest guy. Serena Nelson, also viewed as a champion of this renaissance, simply didn’t seem to get along with Trowe for whatever reason. Trowe had been seen as responsible as bringing the Leisure Suit Larry franchise back, and Nelson had been a volunteer on the game, so it seems their beef would begin there.
Where it essentially “ends” is Trowe outing Nelson as transsexual. Though Nelson stated it wasn’t a secret, most didn’t appreciate Paul Trowe volunteering this information. This is where Paul Trowe and Serena Nelson’s story ends, and the game Serena – Previously called Helena – begins. The project was originally a game meant to advertise a new open source engine by Argentine developer Agustin Cordes. He wanted to do something to better channel his frustrations at the event with Trowe and Nelson, this dark spot in their community’s renaissance, Cordes converted the name of the game as a sort of dedication (with Nelson’s permission) and enlisted the help of volunteers to develop it into a wider effort. The volunteer base was small at first, but soon the game and its credits grew.
Artwork such as this are among the many contributions made to the game.
Serena drew in a number of names from the point and click adventure community in a show of love and support for Nelson, drawing in folks who worked on titles such as Space Quest, J.U.L.I.A., Quest for Infamy, and even others that worked with Trowe on the Leisure Suit Larry revival. Cordes himself is responsible for the point and click horror game Scratches. He is promising to release his engine for Serena to the public, which he will also be using in his upcoming game Asylum. Serena shows a massive amount of behind the scenes support and the game’s very existence leaves a powerful reminder that if you get angry about something maybe you should -do- something about it, and do something positive. It’s the kind of story we don’t see often in a time where most of us would rather complain loudly on the internet instead of actively addressing the things that bug us.
However aside from that, Serena is also a bit of a promise. It shows us things to come from the point and click adventure developers, what Cordes has cooking under his hat, and what might be possible given this engine that the game is meant to unleash upon the world. There are no real surprises in Serena aside from the slightly twisted tale it weaves, so even the most yellow bellied of players can get through this one safely. It’s more than worthy of killing an afternoon, especially with an inarguable price point, and available on Steam in a very small download.
Behind the scenes details via Kotaku.
