Game Review: Old Man’s Journey

Game Review: Old Man’s Journey

Review by Casey Douglass

Memories are strange things. Some are slippery and vanish almost instantly, others are sticky and can be evoked by the smallest trigger or impulse. Broken Rules’ puzzle adventure game Old Man’s Journey uses the latter kind to tell the player a story in pictures, not words. It begins with the titular Old Man receiving a letter, packing a rucksack, and hitting the road. And what a beautiful road it is!

Old Man’s Journey has a gorgeous art-style, vibrant colours and crisp animations lending the world the feeling of life going on. Your mouse pointer interacts with a variety of these elements, just by being near them. You can cause birds to take flight to another perch, rustle trees and make an old windmill turn, to mention just a few things. This is without even clicking the left mouse button. With the button, you can open windows and doors, drag some things, activate others, and poke holes in waterfalls. More importantly, you can click to place a little signpost, something the old man walks towards, paths allowing.

Yellow outlines highlight the paths when you drag the hills

This leads us to the most common puzzle in the game: growing and shrinking the hills with the left mouse button held to create pathways. The one rule is that you can’t drag the hill that the man is currently standing on, so these puzzles become a “walk there, drag that, move back” kind of affair. As the game progresses, there are other obstacles that must be shepherded out of the way, and even walls that need to be breached. The Steam Store page describes the game as having pressure-free puzzles, and they certainly fall into this category. They aren’t too difficult, and you aren’t at risk of dying or failing anything, you are just delaying his journey.

Everyone needs a thinking bench with a view

At intervals, the old man finds a bench to sit on, and this is the player’s cue to click on the thing in the environment around him that will trigger a memory. This could be making a bell ring, clicking on people, or any number of things. Once clicked, the man strokes his beard and looks thoughtful, before a scene appears showing something from his life. These memories do a good job of filling us in on where he might be going, but ambiguities, such as a happy scene in which someone looked to be frowning for no reason, added a little more depth. Or I’m just naturally suspicious.

Old Man’s Journey takes about ninety minutes to complete, and in that time, you will reach his destination and see what is waiting for him there. While it is described as an emotive game, I only really felt stronger emotion at one particular memory, and that was about half way through the game. Judging by the reviews people have left on Steam, others have experienced more, but each to their own. I found Old Man’s Journey to be a charming game, one that was a pleasure to play, and a well put together piece of thoughtful entertainment. I would have liked to have been more moved by it, but I will take what I received gladly.

I reviewed the PC version, but Old Man’s Journey is also available on other platforms, including PS4 and App Stores.

Dark Doodles - Intergalactic Handshake, Mask and Hooked

Nope, I haven't just come up with some quirky name ideas for wrestlers, I've been drawing dark doodles again and thought I'd do a post to contain the most recent of them. Intergalactic Handshake is what I think would happen if aliens publicly visited Earth right now; how they'd end up. Mask is self-explanatory, I hope. Hooked is about addiction, it has nothing to do with incompetent fishing.

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Dark Doodles - Money, Struggle, Time and Suicide

No, I haven't just created what seems like an excellent concept for a new prog rock band, I've been doodling. I used to enjoy art but like most things, when I had to do it more rigorously at GCSE I drifted away from it. I also don't like the frustration of the stuff I create not even slightly resembling what I have in my head. So doodles to the rescue.

The other day I sat and just doodled. The results can be seen below. I scanned them into my PC and used Gimp 2 to colour them. I'm quite pleased with them, some more than others, but I was only going for capturing a mood, and I feel I did that. The suicide awareness one came about because I wanted to make the noose-pondering doodle useful in some way, rather than just be a dark expression.

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Dark Book Review – Tart Cards: London’s Illicit Advertising Art

Review Written By Casey Douglass

Synopsis:

In London, sex has been sold through advertising cards posted in phone boxes since the early 1980s. Tracing the history of these "tart cards" provides an opportunity to explore the real example of the evolution of vernacular design. This tour through illicit printed solicitation includes interviews with the "service providers," the marketers, "the carders," the printers, and the local authorities who have sought to control the content of the cards.

I’ve not been to London more than a couple of times, but on each occasion, it was difficult to not notice the bright colours and skin tones of the “tart cards” that plastered the insides of certain telephone boxes along certain streets. On my first visit to London, I even took a picture of one particular box because I was surprised at the glossy quality and array of colours used. Who’d have thought that more than ten years later, I’d buy a book on sale that looked at the topic from the artistic angle: Tart Cards: London’s Illicit Advertising Art. (For only £3 to boot!)

The book feels nice in the hands and as you turn each page, the layout of the text and illustrations does a good job of making it a pleasant read. Although I will say one thing. If you are like me and try to read everything on the page, including the picture captions and other incidental text, don’t worry about doing that too much. A good amount of the label/quote text is actually in the main body of the text so you are just reading the same information twice. Not a big issue if you treat it more like a prolonged magazine article, but I don’t often see this in a book.

As far as the topic itself, it was truly interesting to see how the cards have evolved, the way the designs were tailored to get around various laws, even down to the way the carders stuck the cards in the phone boxes. The book also looks at how, as technology has evolved, the advertisers were able to put out higher quality adverts, but also the effect that the internet and computers has had on the art of the copy writing, which in a brief few words is that they have lost their soul or are less skilfully created.

Tart Cards: London’s Illicit Advertising Art also looks at the effect of the cards on the communities in which they are found, be it as litter, the possible “corruption of innocent minds” and even the way some choose to collect them. I had to chuckle at the information that some school kids take them and use them as a collectible card game in the playground. I can totally imagine one kid saying “Ha! This one does spanking!” and his mate going “This one does Two-Way spanking!” and the cards being angrily snatched from the loser’s hand.

So in summary, Tart Cards: London’s Illicit Advertising Art presents an interesting topic in an easy to read way, with insights from people involved at different stages of the process. Is it worth the RRP of £19.99. Not for me. It was readable in around 60-90 mins and I can’t see me looking back at it for reference again. It being on sale for £3 was very cheap though so I would say if you could buy it for around a tenner, that would be the sweet spot. I’d rate it 4/5.

Book Title: Tart Cards: London’s Illicit Advertising Art

Author: Caroline Archer

Publisher: Mark Batty

ISBN-10: 0972424040

RRP: £19.99

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