Goetia

Author: David Soriano

Date: 2020-03-04 02:09:45

Goetia, like so many other independent games, was born as a result of crowdfunding on the Kickstarter platform. More than a year ago the French developer decided to hang her project on the financing page with a goal of € 30,000, which was achieved 70 hours before the deadline. In addition, it has the support of the Square-Enix Collective initiative, which precisely promotes some of the most interesting projects in the indie landscape. So, with this mixture of independent study plus great company behind (an increasingly used practice), it is our turn to immerse ourselves in the mysterious atmosphere of Goetia.

This title is a point and click adventure that is set in an English mansion during the 40s, in the middle of World War II. Our work will be the companion of the protagonist of the title, the young Abigail Blackwood . The particularity? That she died 50 years ago and it will be her specter who tries to find out what has happened, since from the first moment we are told that she has practically no awareness of her death.

The first two hours approximately will serve as a contact. The Mansion is divided by rooms and there is also a color block that cuts off access to some of them. Until we manage to overcome the first of these blockages, we will wander Blackwood Manor, understanding the mechanics of the game. In the first place, the resolution of their puzzles seemed too affordable, since it incorporates a button that shows a visual indicator on the screen of those objects that are interactive.

However, little by little everything is becoming convoluted. Once those first two more linear hours have passed in the structure, the player decides how he will move around the scenes and mark his own path . The game incorporates more than 90 rooms , since in addition to the Blackwood Mansion, there are forests, caves, ruins and abandoned houses. In most cases, these extra areas are accessed through frames that immerse us in some memory of the past, as an interactive flashback.

These five areas will make us easily exceed 8 hours of play as soon as we get tangled up at some specific point (and it will surely happen). To differentiate a bit from the classic point and click pattern, and taking advantage of Abigail's ghostly form, the mechanics to move certain objects will be to possess them , so we can make them levitate. This has a counterpart; During this phase you cannot cross walls, so we will have to find a way to get them to change their stay using for example a forklift or cracks in the walls.

As we mentioned before, there is a distribution by colors for the different blockages in the areas of the map. Each one is associated with one of the ghostly powers that we will be unlocking as we progress in its plot. To some extent it resembles what happened in the metroidvania, since there will be few occasions in which we will arrive at a dead end road to which we will later return with the solution to be able to progress.

Despite lacking narration, Goetia stands out for how well written it is . The simple succession of puzzles (supported by the visual message so powerful with that black and white aesthetic) is able to tell us a story that is less interesting, since we start from the same confusion that Abigail and his hand (well, ghosts have no hand) We are gradually discovering what happened to the young woman and her family so long ago and how the story has been derived since then.

As we say, it has a pretty smart script that knows how to be attractive to the user . In addition to this main plot layer, the game is rightly based on what the collectibles would be: all those objects with which you can interact and it really does not need to be done to progress. Either Abigail will have something to tell us about them, or it will be a text file that is added to the codex that we will be shaping. This additional layer of context comes from pearls for those to whom the work takes out its most detective vein.

Goetia (as happened to us at the beginning of the year with The Witness) is a game that we recommend playing with paper and pen next to it, since sometimes there is so much seemingly disjointed content, that it would not hurt to take some extra notes . This also has its good part, since it ends up becoming so challenging that it manages to sting the user, who does not want to stop playing, will not lose the thread of that puzzle that he was about to solve.

In the visual section, we find a flat game, so much so that more than graphics we could say that Abigail's spherical ghost moves on a series of photographs . Without being particularly impressive, the scenarios are well worked and perfectly adapt to that mysterious atmosphere that surrounds the plot, something also supported by its black and white filter . As an important detail, the game is not translated into Spanish , and taking into account that the volume of texts that we will have to read is so high, it certainly does not make it an affordable (or enjoyable) product for everyone.

Many better feelings leave us his soundtrack , whose inspirations - according to their creators - are halfway between progressive rock and ambient music . Taking into account that we are facing a game without any narration or dialogue, it is especially important that ambient music knows how to keep the user in the plot and does not dislodge or remove it from the atmosphere that the rest of the game's elements know how to work. The melodies end up becoming repetitive, but considering that for some puzzles you have to stay tuned for certain auditory cues (in fact we recommend playing with headphones just after starting the game) we should have the sound activated.