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Technobabylon - All News

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Friday - July 31, 2015
Thursday - May 21, 2015
Box Art

Friday - July 31, 2015

Technobabylon - Review @ Hardcore Gaming 101

by Hiddenx, 07:45

Jonathan Kaharl (Hardcore Gaming 101) has reviewed Technobabylon:

Back in 2010, a small indie group called Technocrat released three episodes of a planned ten episode game series called Technobabylon, a cyberpunk thriller of a point and click that took things back to the old school sensibilities. Then, the project silently disappeared, as the team went on to make games like "Nancy the Happy Whore and the Perfidious Petrol Station" (yes, really, and it's apparently not that dirty). Not where most would put their priorities, but whatever. Come 2015, the game finally got a full and proper release with the help of Wadjet Eye Games, the creators of the Blackwell series and countless other adventure game gems from the past few years. All ten episodes, the three finish and seven planned, were finished and given a new coat of paint by Wadjet Eye's talented art team, then compiled together into one full title, making it one of the largest games in the studio's entire library up to that date (if not THE largest). It took about four years, but the wait was certainly worth it. It was the big hit Technocrat needed, but as far as the title weighs on Wadjet Eye's output, it came up with a few issues.

The game's story proper follows three main characters in the cyberpunk city of Newton. The first character is Latha Sesame, a junkie of Trance, a sort of internet of the future that loads itself directly in the user's brain. Her normal day trancing goes wrong when she's locked up in her home by faulty tech, then nearly killed when a bomb goes off one apartment under her, just as she's managing to escape. Her story intertwines with the stories of Charlie Regis and Max Lao, two members of the CEL. They work as investigators for the city and are on the track of a dangerous mindjacker that has been killing hundreds of people across the city. Things become complicated as Regis finds himself being blackmailed by an unknown person, and things quickly start spiraling out of control and his past starts catching up with him. Among all this is Central, the world's greatest AI that runs Newton, and the center of all the conflict that's occurring. [...]

Thursday - May 21, 2015

Technobabylon - Review & Interview @ TechRaptor

by Hiddenx, 20:41

Cyberpunk comes back. Don Parsons from TechRaptor reviewed the excellent Point&Click Adventure Technobabylon. A snippet:

I’ve taken my time getting to gameplay because there isn’t a ton to talk about here. It is mostly traditional point and click adventure game play with some time sensitive events (not traditional QTEs as you can just wait and try again for the right pattern spot). The puzzles in Technobabylon are a breath of fresh air. They are challenging at times but logical in almost all instances. There were one or two that had me feeling it stretched logic some, but by and large the puzzles in this game were of very good design, logically proceeding from the story and fitting into it, rather than puzzles for puzzles sake, or puzzles that make no sense. A lot of the puzzles even have multiple solutions to them, which also helps mitigate a  traditional adventure puzzle flaw where if you aren’t thinking exactly the same way as the developer, you can’t solve it.

The inventory interface is clean and works well, and in more modern traditions it gets rid of items that you won’t need for future puzzles. That makes it easier to know what your options are, which means that even if you get stuck, you can probably eventually brute force your way through the situation. The game wouldn’t hurt with a bit more feedback at times during puzzles, but it does pretty well most of the time with the world around you having hints on occasion.

He interviewed developer James Dearden, too:

TechRaptor: Technobabylon was originally released as freeware, what was the hope in revisiting and updating it to release as a commercial product?

James: Way back in 2010, I’d started making Technobabylon as a practice attempt at making adventure games. Before that, all I’d done were a couple of simple puzzle and strategy games, and I wanted to get better before tackling a longer narrative. However, Technobabylon turned out to be more popular than I’d expected, so as the narrative grew, I thought it might benefit from being all together as one large project, rather than a series of episodes with sharp quality changes.

I’d seen the success that other commercial projects like Gemini Rue had had with Wadjet Eye, so I thought it’d be worth a chance by showing Dave the demo at AdventureX in 2012. Apparently my pitch succeeded, so this is my opportunity to turn indie games into something more than just a hobby for me!

There's a demo on Steam to test the game.

Information about

Technobabylon

Developer: Technocrat Games

SP/MP: Single-player
Setting: Sci-Fi
Genre: Non-RPG
Combat: None
Play-time: 10-20 hours
Voice-acting: Full

Regions & platforms
Internet
· Homepage
· Platform: PC
· Released: 2015-05-14
· Publisher: Wadjet Eye Games