The Long Reach Demo

Episodic adventure games have caught on in the last few years, mainly thanks to studios like Telltale. Since they have managed to create so many wonderful sagas, including The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and The Wolf Among Us, it’s only natural that other studios would try it as well. Life Is Strange is another fine example, but there are much simpler games out there as well.

The Long Reach is a 2D adventure game with point-and-click mechanics in which you play the role of Calvin, a seemingly regular dude with a craving for jellies. The actual game is not very long right now, since it’s actually more of a teaser than anything else, but it’s already obvious that this could turn into something exciting with enough work and dedication from the developers.

Besides the fact that your name is Calvin, there’s not much information provided about the main character. The people at the shop seem to know him very well, including the owner and an old lady just doing her groceries. It would also seem like it depends on what you answer to their questions, so maybe choice has something to do with the overall plot and story.

Given the 2D representation of the game, you’d think the interface is pretty awkward for a point-and-click adventure flick. However, it’s actually very intuitive and simple to figure out, because every item you can interact with is marked as such. You can actually use the mouse to click on the desired objects, although the keyboard can also be used for movement.

As mentioned before, the game uses pixel graphics to render the environment and the characters. This means that there’s not a lot of detail to admire, but the designers still managed to create some sort of atmosphere with the few pixels they had at their disposal. There’s still a lot of work left to be done, but so far the game seems on the right track.

In the end, there’s just not enough content to properly judge The Long Reach at the moment. However, if this can be considered a small sample of a larger project that features the same artwork, atmosphere and gameplay, then it’s definitely worth our attention.