Continuing on with my run of short games, this is a totally free game that can be easily downloaded on itch.io but will also be coming to Steam soon. As you should be able to see from these screenshots, this is an old-style point-and-click adventure game with pixel graphics. The title itself refers of course to the famous novel by Italo Calvino, which I actually have read a while back due to my wife’s insistence, but barring some minor references the game doesn’t actually have anything to do with the book.
As you might have guessed, the title also refers to four travelers on a train who strike up a conversation, telling each other their stories. These separate stories are individual chapters of the game and needless to say they are all horrifically tragic. My main complaint about this game is that there are only really three stories as the fourth one is merely a very brief frame story. The first story is also kind of short as well, being about a man who is excited about meeting his lover in a hotel room in Rome, and feels like an introductory chapter. The remaining two are satisfyingly nice and long, one being about a woman waiting for her husband in a manor and the other being about a doctor who resorts to the dark arts in search of vengeance. The story about the doctor is a little predictable and the character’s motivation seems shallow but both are wonderfully executed and great to experience.
Most of all however how much you like this game probably depends on how much you’re nostalgic for the genre. In my case, that’s a fair bit. I feel that the pixel art forces your imagination to do more work and in doing so creates a creepy atmosphere that is very different. As game graphics have generally become more realistic, there seems to be less emphasis on unusual art styles. In this case, with so few pixels in play, you actually pay more attention to you do have, to the objects in the room to the animations of the characters. It looks great and it sounds great.
While there is some light puzzling involved in the gameplay, this is mostly a very straightforward narrative experience. The puzzles are difficult enough that you need to be paying attention to the clues but generally not so hard as to actually stump the player. In any case, when you get things wrong there is immediate feedback so you don’t need to worry about things too much. For me, this level of difficulty is ideal and doesn’t get in the way of the story and I really hate adventure games which are deliberately so obtuse that you need to look the solution up and were designed so in order to make the game last longer.
Anyway this game basically does everything right in my book and like I said, my main complaint is that it’s too short. I hope they make more like and I will happily pay for them. But please don’t make them any more difficult!