Little Orpheus
iOS
For both developer and protagonist, The Chinese Room’s latest is a brave leap into unknown territory. Sent to the centre of the Earth inside an atomicpowered drill, hapless cosmonaut Ivan Ivanovich returns three years later to explain his lengthy disappearance, relaying a fanciful yarn to an impatient Soviet interrogator. What follows is a lighthearted shaggy dog story: a romp that pays homage to vintage adventure serials through the lens of a Playdead-lite puzzle-platformer, with a vibrant aesthetic and humorous tone that most obviously recalls Journey To The Savage Planet. When Ivanovich finds himself perched on a tree branch, encased within a giant egg that’s being side-eyed by a hungry T-Rex, we’re forced to pause and ask ourselves: is this really from the folk who brought us Dear Esther?
It is, and it isn’t (the studio was disbanded after Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture, before being acquired by Sumo Digital and rebuilt with a new team) but nevertheless, Little Orpheus feels like a statement of intent. The exchanges between Ivanovich and the general are often funny. “It is a cautionary tale of unleashed tyranny!” the – possibly unreliable – narrator insists. “It is a cautionary tale of unleashed idiocy!” is the exasperated response. Indeed, at times Ivanovich feels like a Russian Frank Spencer, blundering from one catastrophe to another, surviving through dumb luck and happenstance. There are pratfalls aplenty and an abundance of non-verbal gags besides, each honed with careful attention to timing and some sharp animation: the solution to a walrus blocking your progress is a wonderful piece of physical comedy. Its nimble score (from Jim Fowler and regular composer Jessica Curry) is typically strong, while its settings are consistently beautiful – between lush jungles and underground cities, it certainly doesn’t want for visual variety.
Alas, the same can’t be said for what you actually do. The simple stealth of the first episode is elevated by its brilliant staging, but it never develops; in a later episode, you’ll wait for searchlights to pass by before trotting to the next bit of cover, as you’ve done in a hundred other games. The puzzles are generic: push this block, press that switch, pull that lever. You’ll wait for cascades of toxic liquid to stop before jumping across gaps and turn spotlights onto deadly flora so they shrink away, letting you pass through safely. And when the pace starts to sag around the mid-point, no amount of cod-Russian narration, amusing slapstick or gorgeous scenery can distract you from the tedium of the tasks you’re set. For all that, we’re glad to see The Chinese Room branching out, even if this narrative experiment sometimes seems as misguided as Ivanovich’s mission.