3 GEEKS

Review

Somewhere in France, in a possible alternate time and universe, Nathanael the hermit lives in peace and harmony with his most precious possession, his pet goat, Simone. He notes to himself that according to the Mayan calendar, the world will end the following day, Dec 21, 2012. As he is admiring his beloved pet, it eats a tin can, which proves fatal for the poor thing. This enrages Nathanael, and he vows to end humanity the following day with nuclear fire. Elsewhere in the city, 3 patients at the Gassouillin-dur-Argent Psychiatric Hospital, Rodolphe, Cyprien, and Luc, who have been held for over a year there, conspire to escape from the facility together. They manage to escape by stealing the outfits of astronauts who were using the training facilities, but they are mistaken for the real astronauts and launched into space just in time to see the world being blown to bits by nuclear bombs. 5 years pass and the shuttle auto-pilots back to earth.  They land in Ragoon City, a small post-nuclear city was not eradiated. And now our mad adventure begins as we take turns controlling all 3 characters!

Released on Feb 22, 2019 by developer Romuald Serrado, and published by Adipson Studio, it is a 2D, post-apocalyptic, point & click, adventure game. It features a playstyle modeled after old school point & clicks, with a multitude of puzzles to solve (some harder than others but not overly difficult). Four chapters have a minimum of 6 hours of gameplay, including French humor with references to French cult comedies. An easy-to-use interface in which you can save your games at any time, and a marvelous cartoonish graphics style make it fun to watch the story unfold. The title is in French, and currently only has English added to its translations.

We begin our playtime as Rodolphe, and we discover that we cannot leave the facility because we're a few minutes late to sign our release papers. We then begin trying to find a way to escape. While we are exploring ,we find Cyprien and Luc locked in cells, and release them.  Together we plan our escape. We manage to escape wearing astronaut gear, but are mistaken for real astronauts, loaded onto a rocket and blasted into space. Lucky for us, as we launch, the Earth is blasted by multiple nuclear explosions and we barely escape with our lives. About 5 years later, the ship auto-pilots back to Earth and lands us in a safe zone by a small city of survivors. Chapter 2 starts here and you are still in control of Rodolphe. You must find the necessary items to build a generator in order to power the gaming console for your friends. From here the wackiness really kicks into gear. Once you get through chapter 2, in chapter 3 you will control Cyprien, and the 4th chapter Luc.

I found the title to be very cute; I simply loved the graphics!  The puzzles were fun and well-designed; I did have some issues understanding some things (with the translations being done in google translate, they are often not very accurate and do not get across the proper message for English speakers). This made playing much more difficult than it needed to be, but as a point & click, if you keep clicking and combining items you can figure it out. Some translations have not been put in place yet and are still in French; they were very few and are being reported for patching. I would recommend a proper translation service for the title. Tasking out of the title (Alt-Tab), the audio locks in an endless loop till you regain focus to it. It also has issues with the Steam overlay system. You are able to take screenshots, but are unable to interact with the Steam network via (Shift-Tab); the overlay comes up, but the mouse stays locked to the game, even if you do not use the setting in the launcher to lock it to the game.  This setting is useful for multi-monitor users, as without it you will find it likes to click off screen and minimize the game.

I didn't always understand the French humor or the references to French cult comedies, as I never have watched any. But I still had a lot of chuckles and a lot of OMG moments as I played, along with a bit of frustration in the mix. French natives I am sure will have a much better understanding of it than I did.

Additional Note: The steam overlay does work if you use the OpenGL version and not the Direct X version through the game launcher. It does not fix the lock up on tasking out but does fix the overlay issue.

Review written by DamageInc.for Zeepond.com!