Tina and her robot SAM-53 are in the middle of it all. The orphan and her companion practically live on the streets and fight for survival in the neo-Berlin of 2062, while Rumpf controls the city. At least the nine-year-old can rely on SAM to protect her during her forays - and the player can switch roles at any time.
It's initially really fun to move the three-dimensionally animated duo through the strikingly designed 2D backgrounds, as a charming cartoon atmosphere with a bit of Bladerunner flair is created.
Encodya is a classic adventure game in which you use the mouse to search for possible interactions, collect items, sometimes combine them in your inventory as well as use them to solve things. No sooner have you looked around between Sushi bars and tech stores than your inventory is filled with items like floppy disks, RAM, antenna, wrench, fish, tape & co.
Sounds pleasantly familiar, plays solidly, but the game mechanics can hardly set creative accents. It is also a pity that there are no 3D objects that can be examined and that you can only look at selected things for a few seconds with the magnifying glass. In addition, more meaningful feedback could have been given for "wrong" combinations - especially since you accumulate so many items.
In addition, "100 locations" sounds good, and most of them look great, but many of them seem more like placeholders with too little interaction and quite similar puzzles - or they are almost empty; here, the game has simply been artificially stretched. It is nice that you can quickly sprint through larger areas via double-click, which you have to explore several times, as usual, to really find everything - or to finally open a path with the solution in your luggage.
Unfortunately, not only the game mechanics lose their appeal, but also the narrative, which mostly fluctuates between seriousness and situational comedy - except that it doesn't reach the level of a "dramedy" where you can laugh and be affected.
The star of this adventure game is neither the mechanics nor the story, but the visual aesthetics. The cyberpunk scenario is atmospheric and convinces with great designed characters as well as backdrops, in which Berlin architecture is mixed with plenty of Japanese flairs so that you almost feel like you are in Tokyo.
Conclusion
You just have to like the big robot and the little orphan! It's fun to explore futuristic Berlin with the unequal duo. Unfortunately, neither the usual point&click mechanics nor the somewhat too clumsily told story get beyond a solid level - although both offer enough potential. The story, which fluctuates between situational humor and socio-critical seriousness, sometimes has the character of a juvenile book due to some quickly served clichés and simple dialogs, but it at least remains interesting enough to make you want to accompany them further. You can feel how much heart and soul has gone into this story and the characters, but it just doesn't want to work and bind you emotionally as much as it does on the big screen. The atmospheric backdrops with cute robots and Japanese flair compensate for this over about eight hours - the visual aesthetics are the star of this charming adventure game.
