I have a soft spot in my heart for point-and-click adventure games. When my family unboxed their very first non-commodore computer years ago it was The Secret Of Monkey Island that tumbled out of said box to introduce us to our new PC’s power. Both Lucasarts and Sierra became childhood staples for me and I’ve always mourned the genre as it’s laid on its death bed gasping for air for the past 15 – 20 years.
But there is a place out there where where adventure games still live. A place where you don’t have to be Tim Schafer and have a million dollars to make such a game. I am of course talking about Germany. For whatever reason as time has gone by the German people have become enamored with the genre and a slew of titles is released yearly. Every now and then a game will pull off an English localization and that brings me to “The Inner World”.
Our story takes place in Asposia, a spherical world surrounded by soil where everything rests inside the hollow interior rather than the outside. When your entire world is built inside a sealed sphere air becomes a concern and so there are a number of wind fountains throughout the land that grant the Asposians the ability to breathe. Slowly over time the wind fountains have stopped working and the world has become tormented by a collection of monsters believed to be gods known as Besylians. These wind gods have begun to turn folks into stone as punishment for living their lives in an impure fashion.
Enter an abbot named Conroy who aids at keeping the Besylians at bay by helping to keep the people of Asposia obedient, and pure of sin. Conroy finds himself living in splendor atop a grand tower while the common people rot below him in ghettos. Conroy’s primary company exists in the form of Robert, an overly sheltered young man that Conroy has “cared” for from a very young age after his parents were killed. Conroy reeks of evil and corruption and treats Robert extremely cruelly, but Robert knowing only this life still sees Conroy in a positive light and believes that he’s being mistreated out of love and not malice.
When a stray Pigeon steals Conroy’s prized medallion and escapes down a garbage chute Robert takes it upon himself to chase after the bird and retrieve his master’s beloved prize. Eventually he becomes separated from Conroy and begins to learn about how the world really functions outside of his tower. Things get complicated quickly and before you know it Robert is looking to save all of Asposia.
If there were two important cornerstones to an adventure game they would be puzzles and plot. If the game’s puzzles are so difficult that they prevent the player from continuing that’s a problem. If the plot is so uninteresting that the player doesn’t want to continue anyway, well that doesn’t help matters either.
The game’s general story and villain are competent enough, Conroy is detestable and for the most part his motivations make sense. Robert on the other hand is a truly obnoxious and sometimes creepy protagonist. His calm high pitched voice combined with his nearly childlike sense of wonder cause him seem like an over sized six year old and make things all the creepier when conversations become more adult in nature.
The game has a lot of jokes to tell but almost all of them fall flat. I think humor is one of the hardest things to maintain through a language translation. Most gags feel incredibly juvenile, and others feel far too adult for the cartoons that you’re watching interact on screen. I’ll bet this is a funny game in German but I certainly wouldn’t say the same thing about it in English.
The voice acting is another unfortunate low point. A majority of the characters are clearly voiced by non-native English speakers and as a result there’s a lot of cringe-worthy line readings and puzzling inflection. It’s not “Resident Evil 1” bad, but it is bad enough that it undercuts almost all of the dramatic flair and humor laced through the story.
The puzzle design in the game is pretty hit or miss. I would say all the puzzles contained in the first two acts of the game are fairly logical and not too tricky but in the final acts your solutions start to become much more abstract and bizarre. One nitpick is that using an item incorrectly will usually only produce a canned response. You’ll try to use two items together and Robert will simply say “that won’t work” with no real explanation as to why. There are hints available to you in the top left hand corner of the screen but it would have been nicer if the game had been more organic in guiding you to its solutions rather than forcing you to feel like a failure every time you pull down the hints menu.
Despite the cartoonish art style and the childish protagonist the game’s subject matter concerning corrupt cocaine snorting (seriously) religious leaders is relatively heavy. Probably too heavy for a child, which unfortunately eliminates the majority of people that I think would enjoy the game’s atmosphere the most. If you’re desperate for a good old fashioned adventure game you could certainly do worse
