Review – Yesterday – Not Quite The Spooky Puzzler It Wants To Be

Yesterday is a point-and-touch adventure/puzzle game. The game was originally released on PC by Pendulo Games and ported to Android and iOS by BulkyPix.

It revolves around an investigation into serial killings of the homeless. The initial cut-scene strikes a particularly grim, promisingly gruesome, tone to the game, but a tone that the game doesn’t quite hold up as you proceed through it. For one, the dialogue is of a particularly cheesy, poorly written quality that, more often than not, robs the game of its mood. The cell-shaded graphical style is also too whimsical looking for the storyline. A few of the early antagonists are too-over-the-top crazy to be taken seriously. Working in its favour, the storyline is adult in nature — murder, cults, psychological traumas, and sexual themes are all explored. In the end Yesterday often fails in maintaining the grisly mood that is initially set up.

As for the game itself. It is well polished. The puzzles make sense, mostly. The pacing is at the skill of the player. There are no consequences for making wrong choices. You’re given as much time as you need in any area until you’ve solved all the necessary puzzles to move on to the next area. The game doesn’t let you make mistakes. You can’t incorrectly solve a puzzle, incorrectly combine objects, or incorrectly respond to other characters. As such the game is exceptionally linear in nature, there is only the singular story path to proceed along.

In terms of gameplay, Yesterday has one innovative and time-saving feature. In all other point-and-click adventure games, if you move from one screen location to another screen location you have to wait for your character to travel between them, usually a slow saunter to try your patience. In Yesterday, you simply fade out at your current location and fade in at the new location, the movement between the two locations is implied. A real time-saver, and allows you to move through the game at a quicker pace, not needing to wait for your character to traverse across the screen to and fro, over and over again.

It’s not a terrible game, by any measure. It just feels uneven in its presentation. It doesn’t stack up well against The Walking Dead or The Room, but if you are a fan of point-and-click adventure/puzzle games, then this is an inexpensive purchase.