Underwater breathing. Not exactly something most humans are capable of. In fact, I do believe none are, save for Twilight Oracle‘s Leo. Does that make him special? Unique? All-powerful? A super-being? Not really. This guy’s just your average struggling student, thrust into what’s bound to be a grand adventure… provided Leo and his friends manage to survive the endeavour.
Then again, what’s the worst that could happen in this fully-voiced point ‘n click adventure, set on a mysterious island, located smack in the middle of nowhere? I mean, considering how alien it is to Leo, Marcus, Jill, and Olivia, it may as well be, and it’s not like they can just get back into whatever brought them and return home. They’re stuck there until they complete their task of locating the fabled Oracle. (Yes, really.)
Oh, and Leo isn’t the only one with a unique ability either: Marcus can conjure fire from thin air, Jill can read minds, and Olivia can summon a gust of wind. If you’re thinking they don’t all sound equally useful, well, I’m honestly inclined to agree, although to say much more would probably spoil one thing or another. So let’s not do that.
In a lot of other genre entries, there’s a strong emphasis on the story and how it’s delivered. Hope you’re a fan of puzzles (and a chunk of moon logic), because after playing through Twilight Oracle, that part was what stuck with me, and much more than any plot elements, too. Not thereby saying that it’s bad, because it most certainly isn’t.
Witty, often quite silly, banter aplenty and odd twists and turns do add to the overall experience. This is quite fortunate, seeing how there are multiple instances where exhausting someone’s dialogue is required to progress. Speaking of, in true genre fashion, puzzles tend to involve wandering back and forth between screens/areas, talking to A and then B, to update Leo (and the player) on current events. Having everyone stay rooted to a single location, until the story calls for change anyway, makes this much less of a hassle than if, say, Marcus and Jill followed a certain schedule/had a specific route they wandered, but unfortunately it also revealed an inconsistency in the script.
See, at one point, Leo acquired an important piece of information, and yet, he decided to ask one of his friends about it moments later, acting like… well… like he suffers from short-term memory loss. Sure, some might call that a minor issue, but it was still a little immersion-breaking for me. Headcanon says Leo was just under pressure, causing certain bits to slip, and something that ruined the experience, it was not.
On a more positive note: the 3-4 hours it took me to roll credits on Twilight Oracle, were well-spent, and with a healthy dose of fourth-wall-breaking. Ah, in case you haven’t picked up on that already, no, this adventure is not of the overly serious variety; even if the threat our little group faces is certainly… tangible. That being the case, no need to worry about “save early, save often” in this one, as getting a game over, well, it just isn’t possible. And I like it like that, having experienced the frustration of an untimely demise in oh so many Sierra classics back in the day. Never again, thank you very much.
Come to think of it, another aspect that harkens back to days long gone, and in a positive way too, is the visual side of Twilight Oracle – in other words, the entire thing is depicted in a rather lovely pixellated design, complete with a one-click interface and nicely detailed character portraits. I’d go into way more detail here, except I’m not quite nerdy enough to comment on stuff like walk cycle animation… things… and other such adventure game design bits and bobs. I will say this, though: looks pretty sweet overall!
That’s also how I’d describe the game if asked to do it in but a few words: pretty sweet overall! There were a few annoyances though, like how, despite a lot of puzzles being fetch quests, Leo couldn’t simply zoom between screens – not even to/from a previously visited area. This did a bit of a number on the overall pace, although much like the bug I mentioned earlier, it is a minor issue that might not even be noticeable for most.
But again, both of those are minor if issues at all, and as such, I’d still very much recommend grabbing a copy of Twilight Oracle and finding out for yourself what Leo & co. are up to, why they’re on that oddity of a quest, and… you know, how the whole thing plays out. A pretty sweet genre entry overall.
Twilight Oracle is available on Steam and itch.io, with a $9.99 price tag.