Richard & Alice is Owl Cave’s first full-length release in February 2013. A point-and-click adventure set in the near future, it’s a heart-wrenching story about family, desperation and extreme weather that contains snow jokes… sorry.
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Owl Cave is a small collective of writers, designers and general game-related people who, according to their website, ‘share a love of story-centric video games, which place focus on character-building and world design.’ They believe that games can tell stories in a way that no other medium can and this is certainly apparent in the first release by Ashton Raze and Lewis Denby (whose journalism credits include Eurogamer, Gamespot and The Telegraph) in February 2013, Richard & Alice.
Probably the biggest gaming revelation for me this year was To The Moon. It had been a very long time since I’d played anything that conveyed such a depth of emotion and I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried like a baby when I reached its conclusion. So when I heard about Owl Cave’s point-and-click adventure I was pretty excited: a story where no character is without substantial baggage and happy endings won’t arrive without numerous tragedies along the way. But would Richard & Alice have me mopping up tears once again?
This prison has all the mod-cons.
The game is set at some point in the future, where unexpected weather systems have led to half the planet being covered in snow. Elsewhere, parts of the world have been rendered into an inhospitable desert. The governments were unprepared and this has led to the downfall of society: the lucky ones live in zones, while those on the outside have to battle with marauding gangs and freezing temperatures.
Richard and Alice are both prisoners but their cells probably aren’t like you’d imagine: they have sofas and state-of-the-art computers, although only the former’s has a television. When they’re thrown into opposite rooms they begin to talk and share stories, and Alice opens up about her journey through the snowy tundra with her young son Barney. But they both have secrets: how did they both end up here and what were they forced to do on the outside in order to survive?
In this future, everyone does what they can to survive.
The game has two main layers and in the first, players control Richard as he moves around his cell. Apparently there’s not much to do in prison (aside from fashioning poles of various lengths) and so gameplay here is extremely limited. Most of it is taken up by the characters getting to know each other and, in this fictional world, you can hardly blame them for wanting someone to talk to; but for some it’ll be a test of patience to click through the sheer amount of dialogue you’re presented with. But on the plus side, it’s well-written and does a good job of divulging information about the breakdown of government and the safe zones where residents are lied to about the dangers waiting for them outside.
In the second layer, players control Alice as her story is revealed through a number of flashback scenes. Notes, letters and other written discoveries reveal the world in all its hopelessness, and there are no punches pulled in some of the horrific descriptions. These sections have no real objective other than the immediate survival of her son through tasks such as finding shelter and medicine, and this mechanic really conveys a sense of isolation and desperation. There are no real heroes of villains here – only survivors who are driven to do terrible things in order to get by – and Alice makes judgement calls about what she witnesses, although at several points alternative outlooks are suggested.
The transition between the stories in the prison and the snowy outside are smooth, and both plotlines have enough intrigue to keep you engrossed throughout approximately three hours’ gameplay. But please bear in mind that I use that term extremely loosely! It wouldn’t be a point-and-click adventure without puzzles, and most of these exist in Alice’s flashbacks; but while they tend to be logical, most of them are entirely too convenient.
With a very small number of interactive items, an inventory taken up by notes scribbled by other survivors and challenges that rarely span more than one area, there isn’t really much to do. Puzzles are presented to the player in a very basic ‘find-key-and-use-on-lock’ form so as long as you remember to look at everything, you probably won’t find yourself scratching your head in thought. For example, a challenge involving a can of rust-remover in a bin outside a church and a nearby rusty ladder won’t tax any gamer regardless of their level of experience.
Now where did I leave that can of rust remover…?
The limited number of locations in Richard & Alice mean that too many puzzles are based around this sort of convenience, and the gameplay does suffer because of it. I can’t help feeling that Owl Cave have possibly stuck to their mantra of ‘placing focus on character-building and world design’ a little too much. Having said that though, solving a puzzle is generally satisfying – not because it was tricky, but because it moves the story along; and in a game of this type it’s all about the story, right… right?
The title’s visuals are extremely simplistic, and I must admit that I can’t decide whether this is a good or a bad thing. On one hand you don’t need you don’t need flashy graphics to tell a compelling story; but on the other, the poor art does moments of anguish or emotional horror a disservice and they’re somewhat robbed of their impact. The opening scene of the game features the exterior of a house that looks as if Craig knocked it up in MS Paint in ten minutes (sorry, Craig) but the visuals do improve a little as the game moves along; the bleakness of the snowy world works well with the chosen design and the subtly-shifting, ‘static’ overlay reminds you that you’re never far from the next blizzard.
Looks like something Craig would have drawn.
There’s some very light music at times but most of the title is filled with the sound of the freezing wind and the crunching of snow underfoot. There’s no spoken dialogue – hence the volume of text – and again, some players may find that this puts them off. I understand that some reviewers have marked Richard & Alice down because of its lack of audio but I personally felt this suited the game; the absence of music helps convey a desolate and empty feeling, and any more sound may have detracted from this.
As mentioned above, most players will find that they complete Richard & Alice in around three hours which could sound too short for some. But the game does have a number of endings (none of them are particularly cheerful) and this could possibly be enough to warrant further playthroughs, although this isn’t strictly necessary as all have something to offer in terms of closure.
Oops…
I’ve already said that in a release of this type the story is the main draw, and I must congratulate Owl Cave on several fronts. Richard & Alice is an exception to the standard post-apocalyptic game as there are no bombs, zombies or even villains; they’ve focused on telling a more human story, particularly when it comes to Alice’s relationship with her son. And while it doesn’t tell you everything about what’s going on outside the prison, you learn enough to draw your own conclusions. This ambiguity creates a sense of intrigue and means you know as much about what’s going on as Richard and Alice do.
So why did I feel a little disappointed then? Throughout the game it felt as if we were building up to something exceptional, the reveal of some great secret that would shock us all; but it just didn’t hit the mark for me when it finally arrived. I think this was probably because I’d already had an inkling about what it was going to be and there were some questions left unanswered (one particularly big one that very few others seem to have picked up on). But most reviewers have scored this title highly on its storyline, so I think I must just be an anomaly here.
Owl Cave have tried to tell a more human story than your standard post-apocalyptic game.
In conclusion, I’d say it’s pretty obvious that Richard & Alice is the first full-length release from a two-man studio and I’d be more likely to recommend To The Moon to adventure fans. But that’s not to say I won’t be keeping an eye on what Owl Cave come up with next, because if they concentrate on fixing this game’s shortcomings they could have something quite special on their hands. Just don’t play it in an area where it’s likely to snow very soon, and keep that can of rust-remover close by.
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