Warp Frontier

This game really could have used another refinement pass for bugs, UI design, and overall experience. If this was released in 2000 or even 2010, it would have been an excellent point & click adventure game with Beneath a Steel Sky or Space Quest vibes, minus the comedy. As it stands, it is a pretty decent adventure game from a story and high level design perspective, but the lack of polish that many other titles offer prevents me from recommending it. For example: [list] [*] I encountered two game breaking bugs that required reverting to a save game and replaying a good amount. This is why I can't recommend it. I'll change this in the unlikely event that I find out they are fixed. [*] The inventory panel enlarges on mouseover, so there's no cursor precision - you have to chase the item you're trying to select with the pointer. Old items are rarely cleared from the inventory, and there are redundant items, plus gaps in the slots, and as a result, you have to constantly scroll the inventory panel, which all feels like the UI getting in the way of the immersion. In later stages of the game, there's a design hack where the inventory is reused for actions involving your MAC (sidekick robot), which suggests a UI overhaul was warranted to logically standardise and demarcate examine, talk, and action verbs. [*] There's some other weird UI design choices like mouseover to examine hotspots, but the text appears at the top of the screen, so you have to look in two places at once, which feels unnatural. This appears to have been a compromise to have click-free examine option without flooding the screen with text, but like the inventory UI design, it's non standard and doesn't work all that well. You can get a clue on what to do next by hovering over the player character, which is vaguely logical but not really (there's also a progressive hint system which works very well). I should mention here that the whole game is not voice acted - just the spoken lines, which I actually prefer, but you may not. [*] The player character and your sidekick block hotspots that they stand in front of. You can't click through the characters at the hotspot behind them, like in most adventure games, meaning you have to cancel your inventory selection, move the character, then select from inventory again, before you can do what you were trying to do. This wouldn't be so bad except it is compounded by the aforementioned inventory issues. [*] The ship's computer dialogue menus are too repetitive and too many levels deep. For example, it's three levels deep to do the most common action, which is matching the cabin pressure to outside pressure, and then lowering the ramp. It's just tedious to have to keep doing this, going through multiple dialogue lines, animation, and sound fx each time, as well as having to enter and exit the 3 levels of menus each time. I found myself hovering the cursor over where I had learned the next dialogue option would appear, which is again the UI getting in the way of the gameplay. [*] Some animations are tedious, like every time the player character exits the cockpit, which is extremely often, you have to wait for him to take several steps forward before you regain control. There are a lot of redundant, transitional areas that should only have been shown once, and transitional cutscenes (that you can skip, but there can still be up to four of these in succession). [*] Some areas are just slow and tedious, like the first fuse puzzle involves a lot of backtracking just to experience the same puzzle repeatedly, and this sequence generally feels boring and redundant. I almost uninstalled right there. But just in case you weren't annoyed the first time, you get to experience the same puzzle again near the end of the game! Speaking of later in the game, you have to repeatedly use your ID card to open doors and elevators, which combined with the poor inventory UX makes it feel like a chore that could have been automated after the first instance or two. When doing this fuse juggling thing, you have to get your sidekick to hold the door, but annoyingly, he proceeds to hold every door you encounter and he is always just off-screen making it tedious to cancel this command. [/list] These all feel a bit nickpicky, but it's the persistent lack of streamlining that adds up to something big. I have used the word tedious an awful lot in this review, but the game does have some counter measures, like the ability to skip cutscenes, and the ability to fast walk with double click. Besides UX issues, the trailer pretty much reveals the whole story, and then the game ends abruptly. If you can live with these issues, it's still a great game, I just wouldn't recommend it in the 2020's due to being spoiled by more polished adventure game choices with deeper storytelling.

Nettes Weltraumadventure verglichen mit Morningstar und J.u.l.i.e among the stars. Leider etwas kurz. Tolle Kulisse.

This game feels like nostalgia. The kind of quests from the past when you actually had to think and that was the solution. Highly recommended to those that are old enough to remember those times and for those of the younger generation that actually want to think instead of beating things up.

A magnificent point-and-click adventure that brings back the feeling of the "golden age" games (Monkey Island, Full Throttle, Day of Tentacle, Blade Runner, The Longest Journey). It has its rough edges -- some items become available for pickup/use only after you make progress in the game (which is a bit confusing), some things you have to do are repetitive, visuals are not AAA BUT The atmosphere, the story, the characters, the Adventure -- are all here. I love Wadjet Eye games and this one is totally on par with those. Really happy I got this game. Really hope to see Warp Frontier 2

Great scif australian game. i love the fact that there are so many locations you can go to on your space ship. an exciting game that i would love to eventually play again.

Reviewing “Warp Frontier” is no easy task as I was hardly ever so torn between loving and hating a game before. I’ll try it in a very conventional style giving you the pros and cons in a nutshell. Pros: -The graphics fit this dystopian story very well and really took me into space alongside the protagonist. -The dystopian storyline was well-told and engaging. The protagonist is a policeman (almost) alone in space solving a gruesome conscience-snatching crime spree with connections to his past. This is really befitting a noir detective story in space. -The voice acting ranges from solid to brilliant. -There is a detailed help system for the puzzles and it is much needed as you will find out in the Cons section.. Cons: -The puzzles are incredibly tedious. They are not even so very hard, but just illogical and they involve a lot of backtracking. So much so that I even considered quitting the game unfinished for some days. -Clunky interfaces. I mean bad UI and worse use of items in your inventory. Really. Incredibly clunky. Simply awful and I cannot stress this enough. You probably won’t believe it until you try it yourself. E.g. at several times in the game you have to use a device with three buttons: you have to select it in your cluttered inventory, drop it on the main protagonist then have to decide which of the three buttons you have to press and when you press the wrong one you have to start this procedure all over again (selecting the device in your inventory, dropping it on the protagonist… sounds tedious? Yeah, incredibly so). So how do I rate a game that would have been a great visual novel, but was almost completely spoiled by the point-and-click elements it uses? Well, as I played the games several times after all I would advise you to buy it when on sale, but only if you are looking for a good interactive story and are able to ignore the awful point-and-click elements.

its ok. cute. definelty not the best ive played from space operas. def not a sim. also some weirdness. i was expecting something like the expanse. and i got that space death race but with less dialogues and content. the game looks nice. thats ok at least. but it should be a bit lengthier. shouldve been more 3030 deathwar

I liked the interface, the story and the lenght. What might be missing is a journal feature to remind you of the story after a period of inactivity.

Warp Frontier is such a fun sci-fi adventure it seems a shame that it hasn't gotten more buzz. On one hand, yes, the UI is janky and the voice acting is of mixed quality, but this is an indie adventure and fans of the genre are used to that stuff. The main drawcard here is the story and the lore. While Warp Frontier doesn't go anywhere novel with the "rugged space cop investigates a mysterious anomaly" theme, it does it all entertainingly. It's great that you can advance the story in a variety of different ways, and unlike most "choices matter" games it feels like all of the choices are ones that the characters could plausibly make in the context of the world. That is to say that the choices don't exist solely to create dramatic tension - most of them are not even signposted and just happen incidentally, just like in real life. The puzzles are more typically gamey where you try the most obvious thing, then an arbitrary roadblock appears that forces you to go back and try something different, then another arbitrary roadblock appears and so on... But that's the genre. It can feel a bit silly running back and forth down the same corridor moving fuses around because your guy can't carry two at once, but fuses still act as breakers just like they do in real life. Sealant acts like sealant. There is no using a rubber duck to create a grappling hook here - when you need a grappling hook, you just use the cable with the hook. That makes it a comforting, modern adventure game. But mostly the reason to play this is the setting. It's serious sci-fi. No aliens, just humans and droids, doing regular jobs and living regular lives in space. The world feels lived-in and authentic. The characters feel like real people. Nothing is going to surprise or wow you, but if you are a fan of hard-ish sci-fi and enjoy logical point-and-clicks, Warp Frontier should provide plenty of fun.

Really nice classic point and click.