If you’re into games that focus heavily on storytelling, go give Mutazione a play if you haven’t already. In it, you play as Kai, a young girl visiting her dying grandfather on a post-apocalyptic island of mutants. Your task is to - get this - talk to the townsfolk to help solve their problems and the mysteries of the island. Mutazione has a really wonderful cast of characters, and it’s fun get to know them and to watch them interact as you make a mark on this community. It gets into some pretty heavy material and I got invested enough in the characters to do some “holy shit!”s at the various reveals. The setting is very fun, I love small villages and gigantic trees. The landscapes of post-disaster overgrown urban jungle do so much for environmental storytelling. They also have triceratopses grazing on this island - no one ever mentions these, or the weird bugs that scuttle around. The art direction is gorgeous, and I was impressed by the amount of care put into one-off little character animations. Also, I don’t know how to put it but the conversation animations are really fluid? There’s also a subtly different soundfont for each character’s speech-bloops, which is a neat detail. The music is a big part of the story but I wasn’t blown away by it or anything. That’s more a matter of taste probably, it pulled its weight for sure.
The gameplay itself isn’t a ton to write home about. It’s basically just a matter of running around the island, clicking on clickable stuff, and then choosing dialog options, not a lot of strategy to it. The gardening parts are more of a game but I think they’re meant to be very zen. I compulsively harvested every seed I passed and I was never worried about being able to fill a garden up enough to progress. I think maybe there’s a bit of a branching story you can get based on who you talk to when and what about, but I didn’t notice any obvious points of no return in regards to character interactions or revisit things to try it out differently. It’s not a very long game though so you could totally do that if you wanted. I was satisfied with my ending, though.
SPOILERS START HERE
I was really glad Nonno doesn’t die in the end. I thought for sure it was telegraphing this like tragic relapse where your help only bought him this one week with you, but no! You end up curing him and he lives many more happy years! So much relief at that realization. The game gets into plenty of sad shit without killing off your granddad on top of it.
Goofy detail I liked: Your character pulls off her pants and swings into bed, and then in the morning wakes up and steps directly back into her pants. I’m just really tickled that Kai has this weird regimen where she gets out of bed right into the legholes of her pants, like she sets it all up for maximum getting-dressed efficiency. The story doesn’t paint her as the kind of person to optimize to that degree.
Another interesting thing was that, while I started out more on the granddad’s side with regards to Kai’s exasperation with his vague explanations (in like an “ugh impatient teens amirite?” sort of way), I found myself siding more and more with Kai. Like dude, things are getting progressively more serious, and you won’t explain to me why I’m growing these magical gardens or what effect that’s having?? This behavior gets all hashed out over the course of the game. The fact that I got roped into the same emotions as the main character despite not empathizing at first is good writing, I think.
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