Crowalt: Traces of the Lost Colony Gameplay Preview

I’ve already covered the demo of Crowalt so I’ll move straight into what playing the game felt like. It still has that same absolutely fantastic pixel art style. It feels like it was lovingly hand drawn in MS Paint, pixel by pixel. There are a lot of colors and attention to detail that made the art style really grow on me the more I played the game.

The puzzles are pretty solid as well. They aren’t very difficult, although I did almost get stuck on the one where you had to deliver a beer barrel. There was a small area you had to drop the barrel on and I could not find it for a few minutes, that was a pretty embarrassing moment. For the most part, the puzzles revolve around finding the right item, and sometimes you combine two items. It’s pretty straight forward as most of the items are near the puzzle itself most of the time.

As I played the game, there were a series of quests that were essentially just a long string of fetch quests. It did feel like the section dragged on a bit longer than I would have liked, but for the most part, the puzzles were enjoyable.

The only real weakness I could see in the game was the dialogue. It felt very wooden and awkward, almost as if the game’s script was written in another language and then put through google translate. The dialogue was clumsy and didn’t feel like something a real living human being would say but it was serviceable enough in moving the plot along and conveying needed information. I wouldn’t say the dialogue was poor enough to detract from the experience but it definitely didn’t add to it in a positive way in my honest opinion.

As for how the game felt, it felt like a classic point and click adventure game. You slowly move from one location to another, talk to every single person you can to glean hints and perhaps trigger an important sequence, and then click on every single item not nailed to the ground to collect items and drag said items onto other items to solve the puzzles. It’s an enjoyable, and sometimes frustrating, experience.

Overall, Crowalt: Traces of the Lost Colony is a solid point and click adventure experience.