The Journey Down: Chapter One review

Reviewed on: Xbox One

The Journey Down Chapter 1: Over the Edge is a Point and Click style game, inspired by classics like Grim Fandango and Monkey Island, which may bring you a bit of nostalgia.

The Journey Down Chapter 1: Over the Edge begins with our two heroes, Bwana and Kito, having some trouble with their aggressive and totally uncharitable power company. Running a gas station and seaside charter businesses has its ups and downs (especially when your plane hasn’t flown in the last twenty years), leaving the guys unable to pay their bills. Now, in the dark, they look for a creative way around the problem, with predictably disastrous results, and then need to find another source of funds to settle their debts – and soon.
The funny characters take everything in stride and face life in the best way. It turns out that suddenly a mysterious woman with money shows up wanting to buy a book.

One of them tries to claim they don’t sell books, but the other says he has some books in storage. The woman doesn’t say what she wants the book for, but since the guys owe their very souls, they decide to sell the book and set off with the woman on a crazy journey. From there you must continue the game and find out what the mysterious book is for and what the connection is between the bad men from the start of the story and this woman.

This is when our story truly begins: Lina finds the book she was looking for at the Gas’n Charter station, aware that she has some henchmen on her trail and not much time up her sleeve. Bwana and Kito, on the other hand, have a spare plane and a big debt to pay. That seems like a perfect combination, if only the boys can make several repairs to the plane and fly out of Kingsport Bay before the mobsters arrive.

GAMEPLAY

As with every game in this style, you click on the location or item and the character moves to it. But it’s quite easy to do, since some items stand out a bit in the scenery, and you can interact with them, though the characters could move faster. The puzzles are fun and engaging to solve without being too hard. The vast majority are inventory-based, but there are some logic puzzles, like rewiring a power grid.

The obstacles themselves are well structured, although some can only be solved by exploring the environment. The objectives will challenge you at times, but are balanced enough that they won’t hold you up for long. Although they are not complex, many of the puzzles are satisfying to complete, since they are creative and reward you with humorous results. The ease of the puzzles helps create a relatively short episode. If the story had been extended a bit more or the puzzle difficulty increased for a small extra challenge, we’d be looking at a truly satisfying adventure.

Because of the ease of the puzzles, the game feels more like an extended prologue than a quarter of an epic adventure (split into four parts). There’s even an achievement in which you have to finish the game in 40 minutes.

AUDIOVISUAL

Visually the game is very pretty, with very well colored and well drawn scenery; you can see that each screen was given deserved attention. Very well designed and with very well animated item movements.

The sound also stands out. The music is very well placed in the game and fits the style and each moment very well, and it doesn’t get tiresome either, especially because you spend a lot of time thinking about what to do and standing still. The voice acting is a very strong point, the voices fit very well, and the Jamaican accent on the character Bwana is very well done. But this only applies to the main characters, as the NPCs’ voices seem to have been captured any which way and sound quite generic.

CONCLUSION

The Journey Down: Chapter One is a great Point and Click game, nostalgic, and well adapted to consoles, a great pastime; it falls short by each chapter being short, but it should please anyone who likes the style a lot.

Fun: 6
Audiovisual: 8
Gameplay: 6

The version provided was the Xbox One one.