Emerald City Confidential™

There's a classic Point & Click style to this. And it features a female protagonist which is a nice change.

알록달록한 오즈의 뒷세계에 도사리는 음모를 파헤치는 어른 동화 어드벤처 게임. 대부분의 등장인물이 오즈의 마법사 '시리즈'에 나온 바 있는 인물들이라는 걸 위키를 보고 알았으며, 오즈의 마법사가 사실은 원 작가의 사후에도 명맥이 이어져온 몇십 권 규모의 거대한 연작이라는 사실도 게임을 마무리한 뒤 위키를 보고서야 알았다. 게임 안에 복잡한 퍼즐은 없고 적절한 대화나 적소에 포인트&클릭만으로 해결되는 수수께끼가 대부분이라 깊은 고뇌 없이 진행할 수 있었다. 하는 입장에선 굴욕이긴 하지만 힌트도 잘 준다. 초반에 탐정질만 할 땐 살짝 지루하다가 중반 초입에 마법이 엮이는 시점부터 재미있어졌다. 게임이 연식이 있어서인지 커서는 산데비스탄을 쓰고 크래시가 한두 번 있었지만, 그 이상으로 마음고생 안 시키고 엔딩까지 잘 달려줬으니 그저 다행.

my childhood

Being a sucker for a cheap game isn’t always a good thing. You’re gambling with your money if you’re picking games that aren’t being played by everyone else. It’s a roll of a dice whether the game is good, average, or just plain bad. Used to be that one didn’t have to chance it when there were demos still around. Nowadays, one has to because developers refuse to put out demos since they’re worried that players won’t buy the full game. Utter ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ if you ask me since demos are a great way to see if the game is actually playable. Emerald City Confidential is playable if you ignore the weird cursor glitch, the game turning itself off when you click to advance through the dialogue quickly, and other issues that other players dealt with. It’s still an average game with amazing graphics and voice cast even with those issues. Having pretty graphics and an amazing voice cast doesn’t excuse an average game’s issues. They just make the mediocrity stick out like a sore thumb. And sticking out is the last thing that any average product should do when trying to persuade potential customers to buy future products. The one good thing that this game has is that there’s no mindreading the dev’s head for the answer to a puzzle. Fans of the point and click genre would argue that means that this game isn’t really a point and click if it doesn’t have those puzzles. And that it’s the main selling point of the genre. I would agree with them and call this game a visual novel with the occasional point and click gameplay. Is it a good visual novel then? Compared to say the likes of Doki Doki Literature club, the answer is clearly no. Does it do anything with its setting to standout from the other average visual novels? The answer remains the same old negative no. Would it appeal to a fanbase that has a limited selection of games to play? Maybe, the desperate fans would buy this then end up being disappointed with it. Then they too would warn other fans about this game’s painfully average gameplay. A never ending cycle of mediocre games being pumped out to sell to rabid fans who warn other fans of them. That’s a sad state for licensed properties of franchises. Not surprising when foolish fans buy anything to support an idea, even terrible ones. A mere average game that coasts on its unique setting to get consumers interested in it. Fanatics of the Oz series or point and click genre would be served better elsewhere. As someone who loathes the point and click genre and plays the occasional visual novel, I cannot suggest any other game that would satisfy the itch for either fanbase. Googling or posting in any forums should get you the answers that you seek. If you still haven’t received the answers that you seek then do not buy this game. Wasting your time to while away the hours isn’t always a good thing to do. Time isn’t a thing that you can get back nor store in a bank.

A fun and short point and click adventure game set in the strange world of the wonderful wizard of oz novels. The puzzles are simple and straight forward so leaves little place for annoyance games like this sometimes do. The references to the novels entertained me quite a bit as they included a lot of things from the entire book series not just the first novel and its movie adapation. If you want a quick point and clicker or wanna experience the wild ideas people have for public domain franchises I really suggest checking this game out.

I quite liked this little game! Maybe the first Blackwell game really was just 'the bad one' in the Wadjet Eye catalogue. I'll have to check out Unbound next. The caveat is that I know feckall about Wizard of Oz canon and so can't comment on it as fanfic or fixfic. As a point-and-click, though, it was well-design and fun, and as a low-stakes detective story I enjoyed it. I particularly liked the way the game escalates by having you take on cases that end up being more and more interconnected -- you start out taking on relatively low-stakes things and then very naturally find yourself trying to stop a war. Each solution is actually a bigger question, and it worked well. And it was so nicely intuitive and solvable! The puzzle design here was really excellent, there's no need to play it with a guide open or anything. Honestly these early Wadjet games are the best case for this era being the genre's 'golden age' I've ever seen -- usually when people say that the game they're talking about is badly designed, or more usually they're talking about quantity and not quality, but these are the best, most interesting point-and-clicks I've ever played. While this game's setting meant it was lighter in tone than the other games, the ending was honestly pretty heavy and I appreciated the questions it asked about the reality of sacrifice-few-for-many logics. And in true genre fashion it also asks some important questions about power and responsibility and corruption. I can see the guy who wrote The Shivah in this game, even if it's not meant to be that intense. There's meat here. I did find the art to be weaker than the other Wadjet games I've seen, though it'd obviously because they were trying to capture a certain era of illustration and animation. It wasn't my aesthetic, but I get what they were going for. Still, I think their pixel art was much stronger. What is it with Wizard of Oz fanfic, anyway? Why is that like the One Legitimate Form of Fanfic? So weird.

The last time I had played this game was when I was probably 9 or 10 years old. I wanted to come back to it as an adult to see what I had missed as a kid, and Emerald City Confidential didn't fail to deliver. Despite remembering some of the puzzle answers (don't ask me how, I'm notoriously goldfish-brained and haven't the slightest clue why child-me locked in on a copper tube hard enough to remember it over a decade later) the build up to said puzzles was still entertaining. Some of them are easy, and a couple of them even managed to stump me all over again! The game's mostly dialogue focused but that's what makes it so memorable. ECC, in my opinion, is the Bee's Knees because of the writing and how smoothly it flows. Seconding another reviewer who said there were no dead ends to the story. The pacing, character introductions, foreshadowing and plot twists are all what make this worth a playthrough -- whether you're coming back years later or just learning about it. Although I'd recommend to catch it on sale if you can, if you're like me and impatient, I can personally vouch that I don't regret the $10 gump fare for a pretty good nostalgia trip.

Played this with my Daughter (7). She enjoyed it. Fully voice acted and wasn't too long to get through together.

Good point & click adventure game. well written with engaging characters and pleasing art style. Puzzles are not too difficult.

played this when i was a kid back when games had trial times before being cut by a paywall now that i'm older, i can say that this is one of the better playfish games i played :3 there's a deep overarching plot and the characters are all interesting ! if i ever finished this back then, the ending would've blown my mind a shame they never got to make levels for munchkin and gillikin country though :( a 9/10 for me only bec i wish they kept Dorothy's hair from her concept sketch