Rauniot - isometric post-apocalyptic adventure set in Finland

[Alienman]

Alienman Based on the trailer and your review, I'll take it that the gameplay is somewhat more interesting than Beautiful Desolation, which was all about go to location A, get info/item, use it on location B, get info/item and repeat.

Also, how many hours did it take you to finish it (approximately)?

I'm not sure the difference is that great since it's an adventure title after all. It follows the classic point-and-click structure. There is some exploration, and you will come across puzzles before you can solve them, which can mess you up a bit.

Edit:

Oops, I thought of Stasis: Bone Totem when reading Beautiful Desolation. Yes, I think the gameplay in general is better. Beautiful Desolation was awkward to me, even in adventure-terms.

 

[Alienman]

I seriously disliked Stasis. Is there any point looking into this further?

It's not Lovecraftian, if that is what you mean. And there are no mutants.

What I meant was that the trailer gives the same vibes as Stasis did. It's dark, gloomy, lonely, and happens in a "grounded" setting. However I found the sadistic (towards the protagonist) tone of Stasis unbearable, and trying to apply real-life logic to puzzle solutions was annoying (I'd like to see anyone cut a hand off a cadaver with a glass shard). The diary logs were also very heavyhanded in their worldbuilding. Is Rauniot any better in what it appears to attempt to do?

Well, it's not a happy place or story. I'm not sure it's sadistic, but in my review, I compare it to The Road, tonally. So there is that. There isn't too much world-building in that sense. You kinda have to imagine how the world works. Most stuff comes in the form of small dialogue snippets. You have to imagine the rest.

 

[Darkozric]

Hey Pyke we potentially have a Beautiful Desolation killer here, posing as Beautiful Melancholy

 

[Pyke]

Im excited!

 

[fuzz]

This scratched that Sanitarium itch a bit, kinda wish it was longer (clocked 8hrs). Had to lookup one case of pixel-hunt - both items of interest and transition zones get highlighted with a color change when moused over, the item I needed was inside such area. A bit dickish placement in retrospect. Besides that it was smooth sailing. Liked the environments and interacting with all the machines. Feels polished, some cool things to be noticed like dialogs changing based on what you've done/explored and little things like timing stuff around the animations.

Ending spoiler

So, the different endings.
I couldn't stop the reactor from melting, shutdown command was throwing an error for me. I've even tried instructing Louna over the radio, to also cut the power off from sector 6, but it didn't matter. On the original play-through, I've shot Esko after seeing Louna's drawings that were in the locked room in sector 4. Which impacts one scene in the final film and one of the credits' background slides. If I'd done it sooner, I wouldn't have to look up that pixel-hunt for that fuckin' canned dog food lawl.

If Esko survives, again you get a change in the film/slide. This one was pretty gnarly.

After checking that I wondered if you can die from radiation poisoning. Walking past the locomotive without picking up the environmental suit, triggers ominous sound and an image update in quest journal. Can still complete the game though, you finally succumb to rads in the ending cut-scene. Was expecting a progress block or some in-game time limit, like when exploring The Glow without prep.

 

[Alienman]

Was it the barn thing? Underneath a door or something.

Edit:

Spoiler

Aha, dog food can.

 

[Van-d-all]

Finished the game recently. It's ok - not too bad, not too good.

Looks good, like golden era of 3d point and click adventure games. The atmosphere is pretty dense, finnish post apocalypse and all (even if NPCs seem a tad too friendly).

I liked most puzzles, as they are usually diegetic interfaces of machinery you need to figure out, but I understand the millage will vary since it's a rather niche kind of fun.

The plot was a bit lackluster - a glorified fetch quest again; while the ending was pretty solid, even though it came about from a twist.

Sound design I can't say much about - music is rather minimalistic and unmemorable, and as for voice acting - I don't speak finnish outside maybe "perkele". The machines all do proper buzzes and clicks one would expect though.

Gameplay wise, there's a good deal of backtracking which in most cases is fast and accessible through a very robust map system, with one exception, the final locations are only accessible by train that has to be slowly interacted every time.

Lastly, it's a rather short game. It took me about 5h to finish. All in all, I liked every Brotherhood game more, and as such I think it's more akin to Cayne than even the first Stasis.