Willy Morgan and the Curse of Bone Town (Nintendo Switch)
Official GBAtemp Review
Product Information:
- Release Date (NA): June 8, 2021
- Release Date (EU): June 8, 2021
- Publisher: Imaginarylab
- Developer: Imaginarylab
- Genres: Point-and-click
- Also For: Computer, PlayStation 4
Game Features:
Willy Morgan and The Curse of Bone Town sounds like an innuendo-laden adventure, but the mere PEGI 7 rating says otherwise. It's actually a completely safe-for-work retro-inspired point-and-click adventure game that takes more than a few cues from the CD-ROM DOS games on PC of the early '90s with pre-rendered environments, FMV cutscenes, and a basic UI and aesthetic. That's a tried and true combination, but do they make it work?
10 years after your father passed, you, Willy Morgan go adventuring to figure out what happened to your father Henry Morgan. You start off at home, needing money and transport, which is fair enough, but when you have to find countless parts for a bicycle that's been inexplicably dismantled and hidden within the very fabric of your house, it instantly becomes a chore more than a puzzle. I don't want to ruin what there is by way of things to figure out, but the thought process behind it is overly complicated to achieve something so simple. Perhaps each individual component was accounted for--each step to get it thought up, and each tool required to complete each step devised in an elaborate flow-chart on a whiteboard somewhere, but why make it so damned boring? For example, I need handlebars, but they're holding the fridge shelf up inside, so you need to find a screwdriver to fix the shelf otherwise the contents of the single fridge shelf would be left in minor disarray: OMG who cares!? Just take it, solve the DECADE old riddle of your flesh and blood's disappearance and organise your damned 90's-rendered fridge interior later!
There are over 50 locations set in a 2D point-and-click style akin to The Secret of Monkey Island, and some are definitely more interesting than others, but it's all a little bit underwhelming and bland. There is a nice quality to the animation overall, though 50% of the motions are generic and repeated to fit the situation and the character never actually touches the items you click for him to pick up; he just does action and the item is added to your inventory. Interacting with the items you procure gives more specific animations; for example, using the do not disturb sign as a lock pick (yes that is another action you have to obscurely figure out) leads to a bespoke animation of Willy jamming it in and jimmying the door open. Trying every item you carry on every item you can interact with, or attempting to combine your items first leads to countless possible combinations, yet only one solution to each puzzle. Good luck figuring out the utter randomness of these awkwardly devised puzzles.
The music and SFX in-game are okay, I guess, but the music doesn't exactly punctuate the situations. Instead, it overflows from one scene to another and then promptly restarts or changes to another track, jarringly, mid-scene. Sure, it has an extremely retro (read: dated) feeling to it which reflects a simpler era of gaming, but honestly, I found this game incredibly boring throughout every aspect. Repeatedly going back and forth was not fun, and to be fair I think I could have cut down on some of this adventuring time. In one glaring instance of such, you meet the creepy in keeper at the Bone Town Inn, to which he says go to your room to get a form; you get the form, and go back down to see him at reception. You then hear a noise upstairs in your room; you go back up, it's been ransacked, you have to go back down to reception to await its clean-up, then finally, you go back up to carry on your adventure. I don't know if I'm being too critical here, but I honestly started to fall asleep at this point. It wasn't particularly engaging, and wasn't action-packed or leading to any sort of crescendo... it was all kind of mundane and I couldn't wait to move on and see something new happen. Considering Willy Morgan is described as having "non-linear gameplay" there is an awful lot of linear stuff to do along the way.
The button layout is relatively well thought out and very straightforward, however, you have an inspect button on B and a use button on Y. Why couldn't they make it so you just click to move/check or use depending on the thing on the screen you click on. Why would I want to inspect an item and then use an item? Why would I not do both in one action? Looking at a door tells you something of the ilk: "I cant get in here yet", but clicking to interact gives you a long-winded version such as, "The person earlier said this room is out of bounds, I don't want to annoy them". Luckily, or not, the portable mode of the Switch means you can click on an item of interest with your finger and it brings up the two aforementioned actions. Again, this could be improved in my opinion to condense the control scheme and make it far less repetitive. At points I also found the accuracy of the Switch's touch screen to be an issue. In order to use an item, you have to call up the inventory, click the item, click use the item, click the item on the other area onto which you want to try to use it. In the cleaning lady puzzle of the Dead Man Inn, if you try click on the bucket it says you clicked on the stain on the floor, and the only way I could find to bypass this was to click on the mop handle (far up away from the actual bucket) to trigger the bucket element, to solve the action. *sigh* It didn't have to be this hard!
With just over two hours of gameplay ahead of you it's all over a bit quick, but yet it's spread out and tediously longwinded. If the game had a quicker pace it would probably be over in just over 90 minutes, but then you would really feel short-changed for your out-lay of £22.49. I understand the concept and progression of point-and-click games, but I can't accept the sheer boredom I felt playing this title. Perhaps it's not for me, perhaps it's not the right time in my life to be playing this types of games or the moon and stars haven't aligned quite right, but I was not massively impressed with any of this at all, and considering the rather massive praise this title got on Steam back in August; I just don't get the hype, its utter tripe in my honest opinion.
Verdict
- Fans of the genre might get a kick out of it
- Slow pacing means it's up to you to explore everything
- It's over in just 2.5 hours
- Even if you love point and click you might be disappointed
- Slow-paced gameplay did nothing for me
- There are just 2.5 hrs of drawn-out gameplay