The Antidote

“People leave traces of themselves where they feel most comfortable, most worthwhile.” ― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

The Antidote has been an interesting experience for me, to say the least. This is one of those moments that I'd really wish Steam would offer the option for a "neutral" review, but we'll do with what we have. Coming from the newly sprouted developer team Innovative Underdogs, The Antidote is their first game and the young developer team has been nothing but enthusiastic and attentive on community feedbacks - which is a praiseworthy sign. Our game is a P&C adventure, with a tip of hat to old school Sierra style; being intentionally ridiculous and challenging at all times. Is it enjoyable? Well, let's see.

Let's start with one downside - and a big one for me: the story. Our protagonist, Roger leaves the office after a long day and being slightly ridiculed by his coworkers. The next thing he knows is that he gets smacked on the head and loses consciousness. As he wakes up, he finds himself in an old castle with a somewhat distorted, brightly colored environment. He meets another poor sod, who claims that he has been there for some time. Apparently, they both were drugged and brought here - thus, the oddly lsd induced looking environment. Our newly found friend claims that there is an antidote here around, so you start looking for the said antidote and possibly a way out. At this point, I must declare some failing in all logic - aside humor itself - that makes the storyline goofy, but not in the lovable way old Sierra games were used to be.

Well, apparently Roger is GeNiUs enough to figure out the solution to various physics, chemistry, language and narrative puzzles yet fails in the most basic intuitive endeavors: WHO THE F*CK IS THIS GUY, AND WHY DOES HE TRUST HIM IMMEDIATELY AFTER SUCH AN ENCOUNTER??? He is drugged, in a foreign place, even plants and wells do speak to us; and we are prone to take every word of the only living human being in the premises granted? The guy simply disappears immediately after telling us about the antidote and reappears only to check on our progression. He doesn't do anything! Look, Roger being drugged may be the main explanation to everything in the game, but some shouldn't simply pass. If he is smart enough to go through all those puzzles and odd defenses, he should be smart enough to at least figure out something is off. As we progress through the game, we'll be having odd flashbacks - supposedly related to this encounter, yet nothing will make sense until the end of the game, where the villain would finally be revealed. And behold, nothing will make sense from that point either. Let's just note that all characters involved are dimwits with improbable IQ sparks from time to time.

Taking a look at the environment design, it is more than obvious that lots of love and labor went into this game, so I'll give you that. Atmosphere is interesting enough to make you keep playing this thing. It is a bit disappointing that there is no voice-acting but stop-motion character animations were appropriately creepy and a nice touch on design. Item combinations, oddly creative dialogue options and various functions of our faithful mouse button reminds you the preface of many P&C classics. I'd say that humor fails on delivering on that department though, and the script can really, really use some proof-reading.

Gameplay doesn't bear much explanation: it is a point and click adventure, nonetheless. Puzzles may be categorized into two: heh, "that was kinda creative, fun and challenging" kind of puzzles (example: the language puzzle near the end), and "what the f*ck they were thinking?" kind of puzzles (example: dimension puzzle, concerning how to get aluminum pieces). I tried my very best to avoid the walkthrough for the first hour - then I gave up for the sake of running through the story. Another veteran adventure reviewer currently undertakes the feat of playing it without the walkthrough, and I wish her the best, and some herculean feat of patience.

Last word? It is a neat little trial as a first game and it has its "heh, that's cool" moments, but overall, it will need a lot of polishing, especially on its script and with some puzzle choices. Still, I strongly recommend watching this team closely in the future, and giving The Antidote a try nonetheless.

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I usually like "Point and click" games but I found this graphic adventure disappointing for several reasons.
I don't care so much about graphics, which here appears old obsolete, I also like old-style games with classic 2D graphics, but this Antidote has a very bad gameplay.
IT is hard to find objects and use them, it's difficult to try your avatar on locations, where it is required to stop at a precise point.
There is no real plot, you don't understand what needs to be done, and the puzzles have no logic; for example "you don't have to feed the well" but then you have to throw some objects inside it!
I played for several hours but everything that appears flat, boring, non-emotional, is not comic or adventurous, it is not a pretty deep storyline and there are no characters to talk to, the game only sends me to the various locations just to examine and collect items to use and that's it.
I think the aim of video games is to give us emotions and make us know beautiful stories, I'm sorry but this game lacks all these qualities.

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Dude, this game is crazy like the March Hare. Point-n-click adventure in the atmosphere of fever dream, in which the most insane things happen. The hero speaks with a touchy meatball, a wishing well begs to protect him from constant harassment with stupid tourist coins, everything is crazy and surreal. The protagonist after the abduction in the spirit of the film «Split» is in a strange mansion, in the depths of which there is an antidote that can cure him of the current hallucinations. And this adventure will be insane, you can not even doubt it.

Photographic graphics in the spirit of the old school quests I was very pleased, it gives the events additional shades of absurdity. The use of objects is quite logical, the puzzles are also well executed. With all this surrealism around the creators still somehow manage to tell a coherent story, with its own characteristics, sudden plot twists in the spirit of the same Shyamalan. Until the end of the game, I was wondering what all this would come to, and in the final I was not disappointed. Comments of the protagonist are always witty, and even conversations with objects in general will make you laugh. There is something cocky in the game, reckless that makes you pass it with pleasure, despite all the obstacles.

If we talk about the shortcomings, then here we again run into old school. Paradoxically, this is the main advantage and the main drawback. In my opinion, various developers, creating an old school game, think that it does not need to use the modern achievements of adventure games. We do as before, it means everything should be as before. But this is a mistake, because there were also flaws in our favorite old games. And the most monstrous of them is pixel-hunting. Yeah, to find an indistinguishable stone in the mountain of stones, here it will have to do just that several times. Such old-fashioned graphics do not contribute to a clear vision of each item, so some of them are simply impossible to find and the whole thing begins to be dragged. And this is solved simply - the option of highlighting active points.

I truly loved this game. She has a unpresentable cover, there are obvious irregularities, few people know about it so far, but she took my soul. Fell in love with her spontaneity and dissimilarity to others, fun and insane movement forward throughout the game.