The Low Road Demo

The best way to make sure people enjoy your video game is to focus on the areas that are critical in the chosen genre. Gunplay is what defines a good shooter, an engaging story is the foundation of a memorable RPG, and creative gameplay mechanics are the cornerstone of a challenging puzzle game.

Hence, it’s pretty much impossible for indie developers to deliver triple-A productions with next-gen graphics and huge worlds to explore, but they can steal the show by concentrating their efforts on a few key elements.

The Low Road is a point & click adventure game that puts you in the roles of two fairly different characters over the course of a funny, but compelling story about spies, conspiracies and all sorts of other shady things surrounding the automobile industry during the 1970s. Although it appears like a regular indie production at first, the game actually excels in terms of storytelling, music, artwork, and even voice acting.

The demo presents you with Noomi Kovacs’ first steps into the world of espionage as she graduates from the academy. She starts working for an agency called Outside Intelligence, where it turns out that newcomers don’t actually do any field work, but mostly answer calls and fetch coffees. Determined to go on field missions, Noomi comes up with a plan that has every employee leave the company for a better offer, which in turn makes her the only candidate for field work.

As you can probably tell already, humor is a quintessential ingredient throughout the game, and it’s well executed for a change. The jokes, pranks and dialog are all masterfully crafted to be both funny and drive the plot at the same time, which is exactly how it should be in a point & click game. In fact, the dialog trees can be tough to navigate sometimes, especially when your success depends on choosing the right answer.

Puzzles are still important in the genre, and the developers did not ignore this aspect either. Besides the ones you have to solve through conversation, there are also situations where you switch to a first-person perspective and drag things around using your mouse. These sections are very enjoyable and not as repetitive as you might think, although truth be told they can be a tad too obvious most of the time.

Lastly, the artwork deserves a bit of praise as well, because even though the whole thing is just a succession of 2D backgrounds, the quality of the artwork is definitely up there. Every level is unique, and you get a feel that the objects in the backgrounds actually have a purpose and are not just there to occupy space. The character animations are a bit of a letdown, but then again this is the sort of thing that matters very little in such games.

On the other hand, the soundtrack is truly wonderful, because it goes perfectly with the action that unfolds on the screen, as well as the overall setting and the mood of the game. The mix of old-school genres with some new-age sounds is great, and it must also be mentioned that the voice acting is on point too.

To sum things up, The Low Road is surprisingly unknown to the public, which is quite a shame considering the amount of work that went into the game. The writing is brilliant, the graphics are enjoyable, and the soundtrack is the cherry on top that completes the experience. Hence, it deserves a shot from every adventure fan out there.