[Discovering Indies] Hamlet or the last game without MMORPG features, shaders and product placement

I will not make an introduction again developing my general discontent with the video game catalog on smartphones, that was a matter of Storm in a Teacup. Now I can't help but talk about the misunderstood and outmoded subgenre of point and click. Yes, that type of game that had its best days and that does not seem to recover despite the resurrection of graphic adventures.

Some of you will tell me, what about the indies? Well, yes, let's see, since the independent gaming boom there is no genre or subgenre that has been spared a major or minor resurgence, but let's face it, there are simply genres that seem not to go with the new generations and that are predestined to become the fetish of 30-year-old players. This is how the video game industry works. In the specific case of the point and click, Over the years it has gone from being a subgenre mainstream on PC to be relegated to four loose games from companies that are only dedicated to that and an endless number of educational games for children's tablets and similar products.

Nothing surprising if we analyze the most "in" in the world right now. That realistic graphics, shooting, zombies, MMOs, DLCs and crafting They are our daily bread, it is no secret. Put all that into a game and open your umbrella to try to catch all the bills you can from the rain of money that is hanging over you. I know, I know, there are also engines like Ubi Art, numerous games made with Unity and many other examples that are closer to the old school, but they are still placebos to fool ourselves into thinking that the industry has not taken a single-thematic trend that we seem to be incapable of resisting. At the end of the day, companies don't sell if users don't want to.

All this is what the game that I am revealing to you today includes in its title: Hamlet or the last game without MMORPG features, shaders and product placement, an unusually long name full of criticism of the industry that remained in the language change Hamlet or the last game without complicated controls or advertising included. A more than decent translation, but it still loses much of the forcefulness of the message by trying to shorten the title and include fewer technicalities. Hamlet or the last game without MMORPG features, shaders and advertising placement It would be the literal translation and full of truth.

Nevertheless, the protest remains in the title, the game being developed in a completely conventional way, unlike games like Quest DLC that make satire the fundamental axis of the entire video game. Whether we call it a protest or call it a masterful exercise in publicity, what is clear is that the name leaves no one indifferent. But will the game be just as well done?

As I said before, with the indie boom, almost all genres have been rescued to a greater or lesser extent, in the case of point and click, Amanita Design is making efforts to keep it afloat and in this case Mif2000, an independent developer, wanted to contribute its grain of sand with this game. The truth is that the good thing about this subgenre is that it is so non-commercial that you will hardly play a point and click of poor quality, since the decision to make a game of this style comes from purely passionate feelings about doing a good job knowing that you are not going to get a lot of money out of it.

Obviously there are always black chickpeas, but Hamlet not one of them. As the name of the title indicates, the game is a fun version of Hamlet of Shakespeare. It takes the characters from the famous work by the English playwright and gives it a twist by proposing an absurd story in which a man from the future runs over Hamlet with his airship and becomes the only one capable of saving the beautiful Ophelia from the evil clutches of Polonius through an adventure full of puzzles.

Without a doubt, the most important thing when analyzing a point and click It is the mouse's response to the interactive elements of the scenarios as well as their variety. At this point it must be said that the mouse is perfectly calibrated offering a fluid and smooth gameplay, which although it is not something difficult to achieve in a game with these characteristics, it should not be underestimated either. Things change when we talk about the interactive elements dispersed throughout the scenarios, which I would describe as enough, something brief for the genre we are dealing with. At no point does it fall short, but it is true that it would have been more desirable to find more detailed scenarios that would give rise to more elaborate puzzles.

Made in the visual context, of staging and dynamism, not of quality or intellectual complexity. And it is that Hamlet it's a point and click light but tenacious. The challenges that are posed, by themselves, are not a display of technique, much less one derived from the union of a lot of pieces of a puzzle, they are direct challenges that appear before you in an even crude way. It is not necessary to investigate the scenarios much to find the problem to be solved, but that does not mean that the enigma posed is unimaginative, mediocre or disappointing, quite the opposite. One of the game's strong points lies in how intelligently its puzzles are made, posing quite original riddles that have made me sketch more than one of those grimaces that want to become a smile that occur when something seems curious or fresh to you.

It is clear that Denis Galanin (Mif2000) is a cartoonist and illustrator by profession when observing the care with which the game is developed in terms of artistic direction. I'm not going to put a thing in the clouds nice graphic section that complies but is not impressive either, sin embargo, me resultaría demasiado cínico no destacar su trabajo y como dota al juego de ese carácter personal que se respira en este tipo de videojuegos desarrollados por una sola persona. No obstante, si hablamos de sonido, si bien las pistas que suenan a lo largo de las diferentes pantallas han resultado de mi agrado, los efectos de sonido se configuran como bastante escasos, encontrando su origen en una correlación negativa con los elementos interactivos que mencionada antes.

Quizás sea esa falta de personal la culpable de que el desarrollador haya prescindido de esos detalles ambientales que hubiesen terminado de rematar el juego. También puede ser la razón por la que es tan decepcionantemente corto. 22 niveles a lo largo de entre una y dos horas de juego en función de tu agilidad para resolver los puzles, sin duda el talón de Aquiles de este título. Sin embargo, esa decepción está estrechamente relacionada con la diversión que proporciona esta aventura gráfica que te deja muy buen sabor de boca que por desgracia resulta demasiado efímero.

A pesar de ello y en definitiva, Hamlet es una buena aventura gráfica, ideal para iniciarse en el subgénero de los point and click debido a su ligereza, humor y originales puzles.