Now and then, I like to spend a little time playing indie games and retro-looking titles that call back to a different era. I find that it helps me stay in touch with my roots as a gamer and can even help sharpen the senses. This time around, I used the game Unusual Findings to sharpen my senses and live with some nostalgia. After spending several hours with the game, I have to say that it leaves me of two minds and I’ll try my best to lay out what I’m saying even though it might be a touch confusing.
Before we get to my split personality and how I feel about this game, let’s first focus on an extreme positive of this title — the soundtrack. If you love 80’s synthwave — why do I seem to be writing about this a lot lately? — Unusual Findings is definitely for you. The game also features a variety of licensed songs that you can even turn off if you’re streaming the game. They’re all pretty common for the era in which the game takes place and they fit well with the original soundtrack for the game, which is truly the best part about this title.
Now it’s time to shift our attention to the bad and I am going to start with the voice acting. If you’re going to take a job voice acting, it seems to me that you should at least have some idea of what you’re being cast in and that doesn’t seem to be the case with this cast. I lost track of the number of times it felt like the individual reading the next line had never even been in the same room as the person who’d read the previous line. Within the first out of the game, one of the characters had referred to Wile E. Coyote as “Willy Coyote” and I remain certain it wasn’t intentional because it sounded more like “Will E. Coyote,” just said somewhat awkwardly and unsuredly.
Then there was the audio of the dialogue. Some of it came in loud and clear and other dialogue came in so muddled that I wasn’t even sure if it was recorded via a sound studio. Whomever was in charge of audio either had not done this before or phoned it in because the audio mixing is up there with the passion of the voice actors. That doesn’t even account for the times when the voice acting and audio were awful at the same time, which happened more than I’d like to admit.
When you were engaged with the characters, it was a lot of teen male jokes. I have hard time seeing women enjoying this game. Hell, the first part of the game was a bunch of horny teen virgins going over to their friend’s house so they could view unscrambled “naked chicks” and it just seems like choosing to center your game around horny male teens might seem a tad lacking in foresight given the substantive volume of female gamers who enjoy indie games like this. I don’t know, it isn’t my game.
The story itself will take you around 8 hours, closer to 15 if you’re trying to accomplish all the extras. The mechanics function around point and click while combining basic puzzle solving and using conversational clues to solve mysteries around you. There are even branching paths, thought you may not realize when you’re affected by your choice because nothing actually happens immediately, it’s all later down the line in some of the most nonsensical ways, which… okay?
I guess it works, but you’re expected to do all of this using only auto-save. In other words, if you make a decision you didn’t mean to make or something weird happens, you literally have to play the entire game over again to reset that choice. No multiple saves to come back to later on here for you. This decision seems incredibly short-sighted and as though the developers did it intentionally, I just can’t decide why. Either way, having only auto-save in a game that is supposed to feature branching paths seems like another decision done in the same vain as hiring their audio mixer.
While it might seems like I didn’t enjoy Unusual Findings at all, that really isn’t the case. It was actually a fairly fun playthrough for me, I just struggle to see how some people might enjoy it. It seems only fair that my recommendations for who might play this game fall in line with what the game has to offer. So, if you’re in the mood for a rather laid back point-and-click adventure with branching paths, tons of sexual inuendo, an amazing soundtrack, and some really oddly recorded audio, then Unsual Findings is a game you’ll enjoy.
If you don’t want to play a game filled with pervy dialogue or you cringe when you hear bad voice acting or audio, then you might want to avoid this game. Unusual Findings has something to offer, it’s just hidden behind some shortsided decisions that ultimately keep this title from being everything it could have been. I really wanted to like this title more than I did, but it didn’t keep me from finishing the game. I like it, but you may not.
BSO Review Score: 6-of-10
