Indie publisher Ratalaika Games, together with Start Warp and Meridian4 (whos games we have covered many times on the website and youtube channel - check them out), have brought us, The Dark Prophecy - a 2D pixel art, Point & Click, 90s retro inspired adventure game. As a huge fan of classic point and click adventure games I was really looking forward to jumping into this one. In the game you play as Jacob, an average medieval boy, on his quest to save the kingdom from cataclysmic witchcraft. Soon Jacob finds himself amid a whirlpool of magical events. Now the fate of his village (and whole kingdom) depends on him.
The game features:
- explore the environment and find solutions to move the plot forward.
- try to touch everything that you meet on the way.
- start dialogues with other characters, choose answer options in dialogues,
- make the main character go somewhere, and let the story unfold.
- use items from your inventory on environmental items or on each other.
- solve puzzles and become entwined in the story.
- great replayability, and loads to see and do
- visit 18 locations - stunning, interesting and enchanting.
Whilst I really liked the beautiful 2D pixel graphics and detailed environments found in the game and its fantastic fantasy soundtrack that filled me with lots of nostalgia and memories of times playing games from companies like LucasArts, I was ultimately left disappointed with the experience. Also credit to the devs for making the classic point and click style control interface work very smoothly on an Xbox controller, but the game clocks in at around an hour at best and comes to an end rather abruptly as if its the end of a demo. It's a shame as the environments you do get to explore are lovingly crafted and I would love to have explored more of it and uncovered more history/lore/characters in the world instead of being left unfulfilled like I ultimately ended up.
There are also a few bugs that at the time of writing are currently rendering a full 1000g completion unobtainable. I'm confident these bugs will be patched in future but in it's current state its hard to fully recommend the game. Yes its a short experience, but that would be a plus to achievement hunters out there, but at present it doesn't fall into either of those categories. This is definitely one to wait on before making a purchase.
TOTAL SCORE:
6/10
The Dark Prophecy was released onto the Xbox store on the 16th September 2022. It's playable on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. The game supports smart delivery and is optimised for Series X/S. The game is priced at £8.79 but is currently on sale over the launch period for £7.03. You can purchase the game HERE. The Dark Prophecy is also available on other consoles and PC. A copy of the game was provided for this review. A thanks for that.
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