Reviews»Gaming»Indie Games»Primordia
2013-06-08_00002
Kareem Ali 4

Primordia

 

  • The good

    Interesting story and challenging puzzles.

  • The bad

    Tedious gameplay in beginning. Graphics can make it tough to notice things in some scenes

  • The ugly

  • Primordia is the story of a robot named Horatio (aka Horus) and his floating companion Crispin as they strive to recover their stolen power core. It’s an Indie game developed by Wormwood and published by WadjetEye Games. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic world where humans are extinct and all that’s left behind are robots who do more than just perform functions. For better or worse, they have been left as caretakers of the remaining cities and the wastelands in between and have their own personalities and lives. Horatio and Crispin are going about their business salvaging junk and turning it into some useful apparatus when the intruder alert on their ship/home goes off. As they rush to the engineering room they’re met by a hostile robot who demands they hand over the ship’s power core. When Horatio refuses, this hostile robot, Scraper, shoots him and takes the power core anyway. After recovering, Horatio and Crispin are left with a ship that’s not only damaged even more but useless without a power core and no lead to find the robot responsible for taking it. It’s up to you as Horatio to journey through the post-apocalyptic world in search of the power core while uncovering the truth behind its theft.

     

    GAMEPLAY

    Primordia is a point and click adventure and the action starts off after the cutscene of Scraper shooting Horatio and taking the power core. You’re pretty much thrown into the world of Primordia with no help to get accustomed to it. The interface is simple enough to understand. You have a datapad, which automatically retains useful information acquired during game play. You have a map, which shows different locations you can travel to with some locations only reachable by using the map to fast travel there. And then there’s the inventory. The datapad can be used with items in the inventory and so can Crispin, who has a separate icon that can be selected to interact with any item or robot on the screen or in the inventory.

    2013-05-29_00002

    Scraper

    And that’s all the information that’s given to start the game. The first task is to get the spaceship up and running again with a temporary generator and try to find a new power source. And a huge part of the gameplay is inventory manipulation, whether it’s combining items or breaking down items for parts. The problem is since there are no reference points for the items in Primordia with actual items it was mainly trial and error in the beginning. And I understand that it’s part of Horatio’s character to salvage and fix things but it felt tedious in the beginning because the only characters are Horatio and Crispin and the graphics make it difficult to discern what might be useful from what is just part of the background. Alot of time was spent fetching items that could look like anything.

    Fortunately it does start to pick up once you get the ship back online and that’s mainly because the interaction with the world of Primordia expands from just collecting items to interacting with other characters and being given some backstory through a book found on the ship. And the game poses an excellent question regarding the existence and evolution of robot “life”when left to their own devices and isn’t shy about addressing self-determination, religion and secularism. It gives Horatio a context and turns him from a character who just salvages junk to one who has an interesting history and a purpose that is a mystery to be uncovered during the course of the game. And the other characters encountered during Horatio and Crispin’s trek through the barren wasteland looking for resources and answers only makes this clearer because of the way they “evolved” after man was gone. I found myself enjoying this part of the game MUCH more than the beginning and even though the puzzles could be just as difficult there was now a story with it and I was more accustomed to problem-solving in Primordia.

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    My belief that the game would continue to get better paid off even more once reaching the city of Metropol. As always I won’t give away the details of the story but the main antagonist is much more interesting than Scraper and the city is full of interesting encounters. The game is so much more than item finding and manipulation. And there isn’t just the simple fetch quest either. Puzzles consist of solving a court case for fellow robots after proving one’s worth, piecing together codes, finding hidden messages within a message as well as other puzzles that require some thinking to solve. The backstory in Primordia is fascinating as well and I found myself wanting to get deeper into it and wishing the game had more regarding that as opposed to the earlier portion of the game being so tedious. I truly feel there’s alot more potential in the world of Primordia that can be explored in some way in future games.

    Just as the puzzles later in the game feel rewarding once solved there are also multiple endings representing choice and they really are drastically different. It was a great touch to have that after posing so many philosophical questions while being true to one of the themes of choice. Some endings require you to make a certain choice well ahead of time so you might want to keep multiple saves so you can go back to try for a different ending. I was satisfied with all the endings although I do have a favorite and I was left satisfied with the overall experience while hoping there’s more to come down the road in the world this game is set in.

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    SUMMARY

    Primordia is a very satisfying point and click Indie adventure game. It starts out tedious but is well worth the journey. And it’s not because the puzzles became easier (they don’t) but because the real star of the game, the world of Primordia itself, has a rich backstory filled with a great concept and interesting characters and somehow leaves you satisfied while still wanting more games based in this world. If you enjoy Indie adventure games and also don’t mind a challenge I definitely recommend Primordia. You won’t be disappointed

  • Gameplay ( 8.5 )
    Graphics ( 6.5 )
    Sound Quality ( 7.5 )
  • Total score 7.5

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