The best kind of nostalgia is often the stuff that sneaks up on you. That feeling when you encounter something that you didn’t even realize that you fully had nostalgia for.
When I think about games that I played as a kid and in my early teen years, I mostly think about JRPGs. I vividly remember playing Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6, Final Fantasy 7, and Lufia 2. Booting those games up or even a newer retro-styled JRPG can transport me back to those simpler times.
I always seem to center a lot of my childhood gaming memories on that genre, and it makes me forget how impactful one of my first games ever was. That game was Putt-Putt Goes to the Parade. This was a point and click adventure designed for kids where you play as a cute car looking to find his way into a parade. The game combined nice, colorful art for its era, with simple puzzle solving, exploration, and a satisfying storyline to make an experience that was quite magical for 6 year old Westen.
I’m suddenly recalling these memories, because I recently played Elroy and the Aliens, a new indie point and click adventure that somehow manages to evoke a lot of those same emotions, but in a much more adult way. Elroy is one of the prettiest games this year, with lovely hand-drawn art. It also has tons of heart and personality. I do think the game falls into a few of the same traps that were occasionally annoying even back in the 1990s, but it’s still an excellent representation of the genre, and despite a few issues, it makes me want to try and dive into these types of games more often.
He Was A Rocket Engineer. She Was A Journalist. Can I Make It Anymore Obvious?
Elroy and the Aliens starts off with our hero, Elroy, showing off his newest rocket to a reporter, Peggie. Elroy is a rocket engineer trying to use publicity from the story to get more funding for his projects. The rocket ends up being a bust, but it accidentally reveals a message from Elroy’s father, who disappeared 18 years ago. After discovering that his dad might be on an alien planet (I don’t consider this a spoiler because… you know… the title of the game), Elroy sets out to find him. Given the nature of the discovery, Peggie also comes along in order to hopefully break a massive story.
In the interest of avoiding spoilers, I won’t go into any more details beyond that. But I will say that the story is surprisingly straightforward. In the roughly 7 hours it took me to beat the game, I’m not sure if one thing happened that particularly surprised me in any way. The game progresses in almost exactly the way I expected from start to finish. Also, near the end of the game, the main goals of the characters weirdly become a bit of an afterthought as Elroy and Peggie end up in some other precarious situations. For a story that was already a bit underwhelming, it was disappointing how often it felt like it would lose its focus. I could actually see this being a really fun story for a kid to experience, as the game is very low on stress or any particularly difficult concepts. But the game’s puzzles can occasionally be on a more adult level, so I can’t say that this game is meant to be a Putt-Putt-esque “baby’s first point and click” type of experience. Outside of one moment in particular, I can’t say I was ever truly invested in the story in any real way.
Usually, this would be quite disappointing for a game that is so focused on its narrative, but it didn’t bother me nearly as much as it usually would. That is because the game just emanates a level of joy and fun that is hard to match. Elroy is chock-full of personality everywhere you look. When exploring various locales, almost every character you talk to has some sort of funny gimmick that they lean hard into. The game puts you in plenty of weird scenarios that are consistently amusing. And our lead characters are just pitch-perfect. Elroy is a genius, but also kind of dumb sometimes, and is also consistently awkward in some of the best ways. Peggie is the perfect, more worldly, and more grounded figure, but she also knows how to have fun. Both characters are very well voiced by Jay Rincon and Dev Joshi, respectively. I may not have been wild invested in all of the events of the game, but I did feel invested in both of them and their personal journeys and interactions. The writing in the game is consistently clever and fun, and I greatly enjoyed every random conversation in the game. More than anything else, Elroy and the Aliens leans on its vibes, and that was generally enough for me.
My Favorite Part Of Putting A Puzzle Together Is When I Can’t Find The Last Piece, And It Turns Out My 3 Year Old Put It Under A Couch
In-between the narrative, the gameplay of Elroy and the Aliens is about what you would expect from any point and click game out there. You will slowly accumulate random ass items, and find equally random ways to use them in order to progress the story. Like many point and click games, Elroy and the Aliens is a lot like setting up a large set of dominos to topple over. When you reach a new area, you will spend a fair bit of time collecting all of the items that there are to find and talking to everyone that you can. Once you have that all done, the puzzles usually work in a way where after you do one thing, you are able to do the next thing, and so on.
This can occasionally be very satisfying. After doing all the work and collecting everything needed, it feels great to slowly use one item at a time and make your way towards progressing to the next part of the story. Like most point and click games, you never really have more than 7 or 8 items usually, so it’s not too hard to figure out what you need to do in order to move forward. Most of the time, if you are stuck, just using random items on things will eventually make progress happen. The game also has a variety of standalone types of puzzles that I thought were a pretty solid way to mix things up. You will find yourself unlocking doors and other areas with puzzles that have Minesweeper elements and some redirecting light with mirrors type of puzzles as well. I enjoyed these, and they gave the game a bit of extra difficulty that I think it needed.
But the puzzle solving process can also be a nuisance at times. If you happen to miss out on picking up an item, which can occasionally blend in with the environment and not look like something you can pick up, it can really halt your process. It is super annoying to go back to every area to look for what you missed. Even when you do have everything you need, you will spend a lot of time going back and forth between areas you have already been to in order to get through each puzzle. I wish the game was designed in a way where once you have everything you need, I didn’t have to go back to an area multiple times in order to accomplish everything.
Part of my problems with the game probably came from the lack of any sort of journal or objectives menu. When you encounter a problem that needs to be solved in the game, there is no menu giving you a task list so that you don’t forget about it. In a few areas in the game, you can talk to a specific character, and they will help summarize what needs to be done, but I think a menu journal would have been way better. I had a few times when I took several days off from the game, and trying to figure out what my goals were again whenever this happened was pretty annoying. I was always able to get through it, but sometimes it required even more backtracking to figure everything out. Hopefully, in any future games from Motiviti, they consider implementing a feature like this.
I will say that when I was backtracking a bunch, at least all of the locations I went to were absolutely gorgeous. Elroy and the Aliens is a hand-drawn game, and it is easily one of the prettiest games I have played this year. I love the character models, the animations, and all of the environments. There’s great art direction and a nice variety of locales that keep things fresh. The music is nice enough as well.
In This Section, I Mention Putt-Putt Goes To The Parade And Grim Fandago Like They Are In The Same Tier Of Game Quality Unironically
One fun element of Elroy and the Aliens is that it takes place in 1993. It’s probably no coincidence that this year was chosen, considering it’s one of the years where point and click games were in their prime. Back in the mid-90s, the point and click genre was one of the biggest in the industry.
Elroy and the Aliens took me back to those simpler times for a few brief hours. I remembered playing Putt-Putt, Secret of Monkey Island, Grim Fandago, and several other games from my youth.
Unfortunately, Elroy and the Aliens never went quite beyond being pleasant and cute for me. Its story and some elements of its puzzles hold it back from being a game that can stand alongside some of those classics from the 90s. But despite its flaws, it’s a game that will make me stop and look at this genre much closer in the future. It also put me on alert for the next game from Motivi. Both this genre and this developer have a lot more potential than I initially realized, and I hope they can fully live up to that potential next time around.
Score: 7.5/10
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