Alum

An interesting mystical journey if you are not too allergic to religious themes.

We gave this game a 5.5/10 when we played it, but it sticks in the mind years later. Alum is a super accurate 90s point-and-click adventure game, except it came out in 2015. It even has a separate configuration wizard before you boot it, and you can technically run it unscaled in a really tiny window. The art direction, music, funny voice acting, and the ridiculous nature of so much of it makes this game incredibly charming and memorable, despite the gameplay and puzzles being infuriating at (many) times. I love this game. Very excited for Wildwood Down, and somehow we missed the launch of Sentry City. Finally doing a playthrough of that soon.

♥♥♥♥, yes

I want to begin this review with the fact that the developers blatantly state this game has a big Christian influence, so if you're expecting anything else it's not for you. I wish I could give it a middle score, because there are certain elements of this game I really enjoyed, but other parts that I didn't like at all. The story was your stereotypical "good vs evil" situation, but what really shined in Alum were the characters you meet. The creatures were fun and I liked the puzzles. However, the exits were buggy and my game crashed multiple times. It would automatically skip conversations and I had no idea what was going on for certain parts. The voice acting was fairly decent all-around, but certain characters' voices just didn't hit right (talking about you, Titus). The music and sounds were good, though. For its current price of $4.99, time played alone is pretty much worth the price. It was a good adventure, but I think if you're looking for an epic and fluid tale then the Deponia series might be more up your alley. If you want a spiritual story with some puzzles and a bit of humor thrown in, Alum is worth a try.

Some spoilers ahead! This is a nice little classic adventure game with pixel graphics set up in a fictional world where Christianity is real, shadowy demons appear in plain sight, the believers' holy symbols glow and their God talks to them telepathically, giants exist, and there are magic potions that actually work. All in all, the setting is unique and atmospheric, the characters are relatable, the puzzles are pretty good and refreshing, the graphics are better than an average 2d pixel game (apart from it locking you in a horrible resolution), and the speech is... passable. Where it falls short is actually the ideological base, which is very frayed at the edges and sometimes just falls apart, like that time [SPOILERS] when you're engaging in terrorism and destroying critical city infrastructure in the name of your God and it's seen as good, while doubting yourself and hesitating is seen as bad. Also that time when a demon asks "Where was your God when [SPOILERS] a demon-possessed man murdered innocent children", and neither the protagonist, nor the Altruist, nor the game makers themselves manage to answer this. It's true, the God was right there, he knew about the demon-possessed dude, he could telepathically warn everyone and save them from the murders... and he just didn't. Final score, two out of four rushlights.

Old adventure, controls suck balls, interface is crappy and i was unable to run it at first at all, you have to downgrade to like 600x480 and crank down anistropic filtering for the game to even start. Otherwise nice story with some twist(s)

Výborná adventura s filosoficko-religionistickým nádechem, která skvěle tématizuje problematiku životní vyprázdněnosti. Kromě občasných výplňových částí a možná až zbytečně okatého náboženského podtextu nemám co vytknout.

Alum doesn't work anymore in 2024. Removed from account.

Awesome game got it a long time ago for free never played it until now it was much fun and exciting and it was really fun to play a puzzle game! 10/10