Sebastian Frank: The Vienna Prologue

Point and click adventure games are starting to become quite popular again, at least after Telltale managed to resuscitate the genre with so many great games over the last few years. However, many other developers are now trying to do the same, and it’s great news for those who used to enjoy LucasArts classics back in the day.

Sebastian Frank: The Vienna Prologue is a point and click adventure game designed to come as close to the old legends as possible, while still being somewhat modern in certain aspects. Hence, your task is to solve puzzles and combine useful objects in order to advance, but the graphics and the general presentation are much more refined and in tune with the modern era.

The story is not complete in this episode, given the fact that it’s actually a prequel. However, it should serve as an aperitif to those who are interested in the whole series. Hence, the action takes place in Vienna, where Sebastian Frank is trying to become a successful artists by competing with a few other like-minded individuals. However, someone is truly dedicated to making him fail, as he discovers one day when he finds his canvas ripped to shreds.

The gameplay is relaxed and pretty simple to figure out, but the puzzles are not so obvious. Even if the basic formula requires you to find an object and combine it with something else, it’s still difficult to figure out what could work most of the time. Certain characters can also be interrogated for clues, so dialog is a must as well, especially when you have to take advantage of people.

As mentioned before, the graphics are indeed pretty modern, but you shouldn’t expect anything too fancy either. Everything looks more like a cartoon than a video game, in fact, but the visual style is definitely helping a lot with the atmosphere. The cutscenes have voice acting as well, but it’s quite obvious that the actors are not pros, because their heart is not in it.

All things considered, it’s great to see a point-and-click adventure game in the spotlight again, especially one with such classic gameplay mechanics. However, this still needs some work before it’s ready for the real world, and it’s pretty obvious that the developers have the potential to do it.