Those of us who know Ratalaika Games, a company that has been around for about 10 years, know that the company traditionally makes very simple and short games, although generally entertaining. when i saw the trailer THE DARK PROPHECY It immediately caught my eye: a retro-style point & click graphic adventure that seemed to be much more elaborate than most of the company’s games. But …
THE DARK PROPHECY It is available for Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch and PC
RUN JACOB, RUN!!
turns out THE DARK PROPHECY It maintains the standard of Ratalaika and unfortunately it’s a game that doesn’t even last 30 minutes, so I also regret the fact that I won’t be able to write much about it.
The story begins with a boy named Jacob who is sitting on a dock at night. Suddenly, a magician’s head emerges from the water, which tells him that it is actually the projection of the image of that same magician, who is in another place. The sorcerer orders Jacob to run to the castle of the urgent kingdom to tell Merlin, the magician of that kingdom, that prophecy number 13 is about to be fulfilled. And that is our mission.
A SIGH
Once we start playing things look good at first. The graphics are cute, the classic point & click gameplay, sliding the cursor around the screen and finding different objects to interact with, grab, look at, talk about, match, it’s all there and it feels nice nostalgic, and there’s even a a couple of well-thought-out puzzles with solutions that require the player’s own knowledge and that the game does not teach (like a puzzle that requires us to order the stages of the water cycle in nature to open a chest). Even the classic humor when we try to do some ridiculous action, it’s all there.
The issue is that all this lasts as long as it takes me to have a coffee. The game has only 10 scenes, with a couple of objects or puzzles in each one, and once they are collected or solved, that’s it, it’s over and there’s nothing else. The little over a minute trailer that came out at the time showed pretty much everything the game had. And, although it is something to be expected from a Ratalaika title, it is a shame because with a little more love put here, a very interesting game would have come out. It was only left in a fair ride.
I AM GOING TO REFRAIN FROM ASSESSING
Because the truth doesn’t make sense. Being objective, you cannot put a score on a game that lasts 20 minutes. At least not a positive score. For those who are interested, the retro style is nice, the very short script is well written and the puzzles are easy. Surprisingly, the sound part is quite superior to the rest, with beautiful melodies and even some of them with a vocal part included.
Is it worth buying THE DARK PROPHECY? Depends. If you are one of those players who simply like to have many 100% games in their libraries and already know the work of Ratalaika Games, the truth is that he is one of the “best” of the company.
If you don’t belong to that group, don’t even spend it. For what it’s worth, the entertainment time it offers is ridiculously short.
How ridiculously short this note is going to be, because I have nothing more to say about it. You are going to read me talking longer and longer about infinitely superior productions. Bye!