Rauniot

Breaks my heart not liking this one. Rauniot disappointed me, and badly. It’s a shame, because the aesthetic is killer, and I liked the setting. Characters speak frankly about topics in ways where many other studios would mince words, managing to be dark without being edgy. The protagonist directly mentions rapists as being a threat to herself and other women in the post-apocalypse, avoiding the euphemisms and innuendo that are so frequently deployed to soften the blow of the subject matter in other games. One Sámi woman has to be convinced over the course of the game to cooperate, not because the current state of the world has made her distrustful of outsiders, but because the pre-apocalypse Finns tried to wipe out her culture. A terminally-ill child takes heroin pills to cope with the pain that her disease causes her, because that’s how her father coped, and it’s clear from the combination of losing both parents and living in this destroyed world that she’s been forced to grow up too fast. Rather than really focusing down on any of this compelling material, however, we instead spend an inordinate amount of time pixel-hunting for objects that blend into the backgrounds and doing some of the most agonizing, boring puzzles I’ve had to complete in recent memory. The trolley puzzle is the most noteworthy of the bunch. There’s a main room with a trolley, and adjoining room with a computer that switches the tracks. The puzzle, in its totality, is as follows: you have to hoist a generator, go to the computer room to move the generator, block the exit, orient the tracks, move the trolley, orient the tracks, move the trolley, orient the tracks, move the trolley, lower the generator, unblock the exit, and then run back and forth between the trolley and a giant fuel container to both fill up and empty out a single can of fuel three times in order to fuel the trolley so that you can leave. This puzzle is dead simple, but takes an incredibly long time to actually solve. You can skip running the fuel can back and forth if you bring the trolley directly to the fuel container, but this requires a minimum of two extra instances of orienting the tracks and moving the train. When you arrive at your destination after sitting through several transitory screens, you lower the generator a final time, go to start it up, and discover that it needs a new spark plug, a new belt, and another ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ can of fuel from back at the train station you just left. There was a part of me that wondered if this was all part of an overarching joke. That all of this time-wasting was intended as some sort of punchline. I’ve enjoyed games like The Stillness of the Wind in the past, where the tedium is very much a feature rather than a bug, and figured that maybe the same thing was happening here. But why, then, can you also fast-travel from pretty much anywhere on the map to one of about two dozen different waypoints, ensuring that you don’t need to walk anywhere when you can teleport instead? Why, if you die, do you instantly respawn with no penalty? It would be strange to be purposefully laborious in many of the puzzles and cutscenes, but not in the navigation or the failure states. I’m left without any explanation which could suggest that what chafed me was deliberate. All of this goes without mentioning my core complaint of how often critical items blend into the background. I found myself wishing that the game could have a Disco Elysium or Baldur’s Gate 2-esque feature where I could hold down a key to see which objects I could interact with, but the truth is that Rauniot is so reliant on pixel-hunts that giving the player a clear distinction between signal and noise would trivialize the entire thing. Many of the puzzles are easy, though overwhelming in their tedium; the trolley puzzle mentioned above is the worst example, but it’s rare that you’re challenged to do anything that amounts to more than busywork. What’s being tested of you is less your puzzle-solving ability, and instead your patience. It’s unfortunate, because looking at the [url=https://steamcommunity.com/app/1168490/discussions/0/4294818447593153874/#c4357869046593374431]developer posts on the Steam forum[/url] reveals that they intentionally left out a highlight feature, figuring that there was nothing here that could be considered a pixel-hunt. So, let’s play a game. It’s called “Spot the Progression”. I want you to find the thing you need to click on in order to advance the game. Here’s your [url=https://systemdrift.neocities.org/images/rauniot/rauniot-stp1.jpg]first screenshot,[/url] your [url=https://systemdrift.neocities.org/images/rauniot/rauniot-stp2.jpg]second[/url], and your [url=https://systemdrift.neocities.org/images/rauniot/rauniot-stp3.jpg]third.[/url] Take your time. Did you answer “the yellow pole next to the trolley”, “the length of rope on the left side of the screen”, and “the gap on the bottom of the wood panel closest to the stairs”? Would you have thought to guess these things had I not already primed you to be looking for them within the confines of these exact screenshots? Keep in mind that most of these are solutions to puzzles that are several screens away, so knowing that they’re contained within these specific areas at all is me doing most of the work for you. And even for all of these factors that seem designed to drag the length of the game out, Rauniot runs out of everything by the end. It drops some twists on your head that come out of nowhere and thus don’t have much weight to them, and then skips too far ahead into the future, twice. The credits roll, and it feels like you must have fallen asleep for a few minutes and missed out on the actual ending. I wondered again if maybe the point was for me to feel unsatisfied. If it was, it doesn’t come across like it was expressed in any consistent way throughout the the game up to that point; if it wasn’t, then it’s just a rough ending that tries to wrap up every single plot point in the span of about thirty seconds. There’s something here that runs beneath Rauniot’s surface that makes me feel like it’s inches away from being great. As it exists, there are too many issues to recommend it, but I can’t imagine it would take much to bring it to a point where I would. This is a double-edged sword, however. Introducing fixes to the mechanics will cause problems elsewhere; if you shaved down the length of the simple puzzles and made it easier to find the progression objects, then the game would be shortened to about ninety minutes, which would then make its underdeveloped plot stick out even more clearly. Rauniot is a work that needs to be brought back to the drawing board and given a different set of priorities. It’s so close to being something special that it stings all the worse that it isn’t. The model number for the generator is the word “based” in leetspeak.

I bought Rauniot because its look and art style reminded me a lot of the game Beautiful Desolation. And I really liked the game's art and moody atmosphere which were a perfect fit to represent the hopelessness of a desolate post-apocalyptic world. Be aware that the story is quite dark, especially its ending(s), which felt more on par with the Stasis games. Rauniot is not a horror game, but some parts of its story are truly horrific. Some puzzles were quite difficult to solve for me and required a lot of trial and error. I even had to draw one of them on paper to finally figure out the solution. Also, I found the pixel hunting in the game not much fun. Some items were easy to miss and a hotspot key might have helped a lot to locate them. Overall, this game was a bit of a mixed bag for me. The artwork and atmosphere were truly wonderful, but the gameplay added more frustration than necessary.

Great vibe, you can feel the eerie desolacion. The dialogue feels like straight from a Aki Kaurismäki movie and ads to the feel of northern Finland with it´s quite prominent accent. 4h in and I can highöy recommend this classic point&click experience.

Finnish Stasis with better voice acting but at the cost of machine translation. Hot damn! Okay, it's not so much like Stasis once you get past the whole "they're both isometric point-and-click adventure games with really good-looking backgrounds" thing. I hope you like New Vegas Ambervision, because that's both the main color scheme here and the color that objects get highlighted in. That's pretty much my only visual gripe; the rest of the game is fantastic in that category. Special shout-out to whoever did all the pencil drawings! The puzzles are pretty straightforward, disregarding that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ antenna one at the end. Insane. I didn't find the DLSS puzzle too hard, but then again, I can see how someone would get caught up on it. The story's much like The Road in that absolutely nobody here is having a good time, nor is that likely to change in the future. That doesn't mean, however, that it smothers you in gloom. This is a tasteful apocalypse, you see. There's a many a moment of merrymaking, most of which come from the... unconventional...people you meet along your adventures in post-nuclear Finland. It's far more subdued than, say, Fallout. Is it worth a buy? Yes, but caveat emptor: this one's best appreciated by fans of the genre, either literary or gameplay-wise.

Rauniot is not a perfect game - and it would be hard to recommend to people who don't like point and click games, but I was surprised by its commitment to showing the grittier side of the apocalypse. For veterans of the genre, the puzzles are all reasonable. If you're not well-versed in the logic of these types of games, you may struggle however. There's a good "hint" guide that I found online for the 1 puzzle that stumped me, which is helpful as the game itself tends to let you figure stuff out yourself. It is worth noting that, while this is a short game, it's not a particularly fast game. Cutscenes are really slow and you can't speed them up (only skip them). Fortunately, there's a lot of quality of life with moving around that I was grateful for. I used the slow moments to appreciate the visual design of the game. While there are a few flaws with the writing (as well as some minor typos/translation errors), Rauniot tells a mature and thoughtful apocalypse tale. It has a lot more in common with something like Firewatch, rather than Monkey Island.

Very well crafted adventure game. I did not find it too difficult, I got stuck just once. Most probably inspired by Cormac McCarchy's 'The Road'. The game kept me engaged constantly and when finished I felt I wanted to know more about the characters and the world, but at the same time I don't think there's much more to say... It is pretty bleak.

Todella tunnelmallinen, suht hankala ja lyhyt point & click / puzzlepeli. Vähän kuin sekoitus Suomeen sijoittuvaa Falloutin maailmaa ja vanhalle pleikkari ykköselle julkaistua Ark of Time-peliä (kyllä, olen todella vanha). Maailmanlopun jälkeinen ambientti on kuin suoraan Fallout ykkösestä ja kakkosesta ja pelin aikana juokset säätämässä samoja paikkoja runsaasti edestakaisin kuten Ark of Timessa. Peli näyttää ihan kivalta ja kuten kerroin, ambientti on ihan kohdallaan. Tosin maailmanlopun jälkeisessä suht värittömässä pelimaailmassa monet löydettävät ja poimittavat asiat eksyvät taustakuviin ja saattavat olla todella vaikeita huomata. Kyllähän hiiren alla tutkittava kohta hieman korostuu mutta omalla kohdalla ehdin missata parikin helppoa pelin alkuun tarvittavaa tavaraa ennen kuin keksin että jokainen alue kannattaa kahlata systemaattisesti hiirellä ettei varmasti missaa mitään. Ääninäyttely on samaan aikaan kiehtovaa ja huvittavaa. Jotakin Kaurismäkeläistä tässä on, repliikit tuntuvat tulevan kuin tunteettomasti paperista luettuna ja suht suoraan englannista käännettynä joka ei oikein suomalaisen suuhun sovi. Tähän vielä lappalainen murre niin soppa on valmis. Tulipas kerrankin kuunneltua kaikki repliikit hahmoilta ilman skippaamista, niin kiehtovaa tämä ääninäyttely oli. Tosin en ole varma että meneekö tämä sarjaan "niin huonoa että on hyvää" vai se Kaurismäkeläinen eleettömyys. Puzzlet vaihtelevat yksinkertaisista todellisiin päänrapsuttamisiin. Totta puhuen, paria puzzlea en edelleenkään tajua että miten ne toimivat vaikka katsoin ratkaisuja nettiä apuna käyttäen. Peli myös ei ole todellakaan lineaarinen vaan sinua pomputetaan joka paikkaan tämän tästä. Onneksi sinun ei tarvitse kuitenkaan juosta edestakaisin vaan pystyt teleporttaamaan jo käydyille alueille karttaa käyttäen. Pelin premissi on yksinkertainen ja itse tarina lyhyt. Lorea löytyy pelin sisältä sitten lisää ja mitään paljastamatta tämä oli mielestäni tehty todella kivasti erilaisten löydettävien piirrosten kautta. Pelimekaniikat on tehty sopivan yksinkertaisiksi mutta varovainen kannattaa olla. Esimerkiksi pelissä ei ole autosavea joten varaudu manuaalisesti tallentamaan pelisi aika ajoin. Itselleni kävi niin että kirjaimellisesti vahingossa tapoin yhden hahmon testatessani pelimekaniikoita ja edellinen talletukseni oli lähes tunti takaperin... Loppupeleissä tämä oli todella mielenkiintoinen kokemus. Varmasti joillekin särähtää pelin suomalaisuus ja ääninäyttely korvaan mutta jos ei ota liian vakavasti niin sieltä löytyy ihan ok ja tunnelmallinen teos. Ympäristöstä jos tutkittavat asiat saisi jollain tavalla highlightattua vaikka jotain nappia käyttäen ja joihinkin puzzleihin vähän helpotusta meille tyhmemmille niin välttyisi jatkuvalta ravaamiselta pelimaailman sisällä etsimässä että mitä on missannut. Tässäkin muodossa arvostan devien työtä ja kiitän matkasta.

An interesting story with some replayability and challenging puzzles, but a bit short for full prize.

Good puzzly game with great atmosphere and a nice graphics.

Beautiful design, cruel story, interesting puzzles. It's not stupidly hard, but has its WTF moments