Patchwork
- Patchwork (2016 on Linux, Windows, Macintosh)
Description
Daniel is a scientist on Earth about to test his greatest invention - a teleportation device. Lin is a student Wizard in a parallel world practicing a transdimensional demon summoning spell. As science and magic collide, so do the two worlds - now Daniel and Lin must work together to disentangle their very different realities.
Patchwork is a 2D adventure game with classic point-and-click mechanics. It can be controlled fully using the mouse - the left mouse button is used for movement and interaction with objects and non-player characters, and the right mouse button causes the active character to describe the item clicked on. There is an inventory, and objects inside can be combined with each other and used on the environment.
After the introductory segment of the story, the player can switch control between Daniel and Lin at any time. Many actions which can be taken are limited to a specific character, and in some cases even the way they see the environment is different.
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Critics
Average score: 90% (based on 2 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 4 ratings with 1 reviews)
The game can really drag you in, but only for a short time
The Good
The whole idea of the game is wonderful, even though it's not too complicated. Meetings of subjects from completely different dimensions are a recognizable topic, but it always has some potential for surprise.
The game's graphics are beautiful, done in a hand-painted, pastel style. They have an atmosphere of pictures from fairy-tale books. Unlike at least some old games, it uses realistic scaling - the characters are much bigger when standing close to the "front of the screen" and smaller when "further from the player". Music is also well done, however it changes little - the game world is just too small to feature many different melodies.
The game is quite easy. However, it sometimes requires paying attention to details that could be considered "just a part of the background", but actually need to be taken, or to things that had been checked before in different circumstances.The game also offers small hints - objects light up delicately when positioned against something they need to be used with. Well, maybe this aspect isn't necessarily "good" - it could be seen as either helpful or fun-spoiling, or maybe even as both.
How do you tell a story that involves different dimensions that should have never met actually getting in contact? Well, two of the main ways to do it is either the dark, sinister "collapse-of-reality" version - or something along the lines of a "culture clash comedy". "Patchwork" takes the second approach and presents a relatively conventional, but still fun story full of small misunderstandings between people from two different layers of the time-space continuum. Therefore the game has quite much humor - apart from the misunderstandings, also for example a car in a fantasy world, the fire element's silly riddles or Lin's reaction when she sees her uncle's telescope damaged.
The Bad
The game is really very short. After it's completed for the first time, replaying it can really take about 20 minutes. That's really little... Maybe the idea proved too hard for the author - after all it's an amateur game, made by a tiny team, and a large game with the same topic could be practically impossible to make under these conditions. Anyway, it's a pity because the game really has a potential for a bigger game - even without changing its goals it could include ten times more screens, much more complicated ways to get the items needed...
Anyway, because the game is so short, it has really low replay value. I completed it once, than played it again when I already knew how to solve everything... and now I just yawn at the thought of playing it again. My first thought was "wow, I have to try it", now I consider the game much less interesting than earlier. The game is charming, but it quickly loses this charm.
The Bottom Line
Despite the game's rather large size in terms of disk space and small size in terms of game map, it's worth trying out. However, due to being so short and predictable, the game becomes boring very soon. But still it's nice to see that people still make really good games despite doing it just for themselves and fans. It was definitely exaggerated to say that "adventure games are dead"...
Windows · by Nowhere Girl (8680) · 2013
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Kalirion.
Additional contributors: Victor Vance.
Game added February 8, 2013. Last modified February 12, 2023.