The Wild Case

I liked this game — gorgeous hand-drawn scenes of early 20th century rural Russia, with simple but interesting puzzles. However, the English dialogue and descriptions sounded strange sometimes, and that was often a distraction for me. In a future update, the developer should really consider having the game’s text revised by someone who speaks English natively. Sometimes I could pick up puzzle items before I knew I would need them. It felt a little artificial. I was also disappointed that I could not interact with the game’s scenery more. I really wanted to know what a propaganda poster said, for instance, or what the chickens would do if I tapped on them. These questions remain mysteries to me. I look forward to seeing what other games this developer might make.

The “puzzles” in this game boil down to “hey, why don’t you go talk to this other person”. The navigation is extremely awkward; the click points have to be swiped over to see and I often end up moving to new locations rather than inspecting a potential point of interest. The loading time between scenes at least a second so this gets frustrating quickly. I get that this is a phone interface issue but if you know that’ll be a handicap, then why even bother making a game that will be a pale frustrating imitation of what one can do on a computer. There are so many point and click games for pc and they don’t tend to need a good pc; any laptop will run them and they’re all (even ones from thr 1990s) better than this. Even if this were good, I don’t see why one would spend much time playing a point and click game not optimized for a phone screen. I played through the free chapter but I was not impressed enough to purchase the rest.

If you’re a fan of and used to playing point and click adventures like this, it’s enjoyable but very straight forward on what you need to do to advance, and thus rather short. After I unlocked the full version, I got an hour or hour and a half of gameplay probably before finishing it. If you’re one of those people who complains about that when you paid a whopping $2.99 or $3.99 to an independent developer, I’m warning you now. But if you enjoy these kinds of games and don’t need to get “stuck” to enjoy it, then I say go for it.