Richard & Alice
Richard & Alice is a point and click mystery adventure in simplistic 32-bit graphics. The idea seems to be to contrast simplicity with striking moral questions, but it tries too hard to be clever and hard-hitting.
Amidst the snow-blanketed world we find Richard and Alice in an underground prison. Around them, the world has turned to chaos, but you’re only going to get a snippet view. It’s like The Road, and the story focuses exclusively on the two main characters along with Alice’s son Barney. Inside the prison, you play as Richard, a jovial deserter from the army. He is joined by Alice, who is brooding and cagey, and in prison for murder. As she and Richard talk, the game presents her story as series of interactive flashbacks.
It’s a good dynamic to switch between the characters and the environments, although both are limited in puzzles and the size of the interactive area. Alice is joined by her young son Barney who was perfectly scripted as a typical five-and-a-half year old. It’s easy to relate Alice’s thinly-veiled frustrations with any stressed parent worried for themselves and their child.
The story is told through dialogue, which is good but makes for a lot of reading. The atmosphere of the game could have been enhanced by more dynamic music; much of the game seems to be in near-silence, but some would argue that adds to the atmosphere. As the narrative escalates with the pair’s attempt to escape from prison, and Alice’s flashbacks leading to her imprisonment, it’s easy to keep playing to see what is going to happen. I expected any minute to be battling hoards of zombies, but it’s not that kind of game, and there is in fact no combat at all.
My gripe is that near the end of the game I felt like I was losing control of Alice, I was just a watcher, not a participant in the story. She made decisions that seemed designed just to elicit an emotional response because of their controversy. It is hard to justify her actions because there seemed unexplored possibilities. If you accept the premise that Alice’s world is only three screens big, you could understand her frustration, but she’s not really caged in, she’s got an entire world outside and she won’t let you explore it.
The main issue is there’s just no catharsis playing this game, which makes the emotional investment hollow. In theory, this game has some strong emotional sentiment, the concept of bleak survival, the breakdown of society and morality, the bond between mother and child, but when it forces you to deal with these issues they seems contrived, like its being too clever. By comparison to mindless shooters, this is a breath of clean air, but it’s disappointing if you think outside the small window of possibility it gives you.