Yesterday Origins Demo

Perhaps surprisingly, the point & click genre was kept alive over the decades, even if sometimes it looked like technology was going to make it obsolete. Big studios like Telltale proved many times in the last couple of years that there’s still a lot of potential in the genre, especially if the focus is on the story and the ability to make the desired choices to change the plot on the go.

Yesterday Origins is a point & click adventure game designed by Pendulo Studios, the same people responsible for classics like the Runaway series. Although it features the usual set of gameplay mechanics, there are some interesting additions as well, which improve the experience and make it easier to interact with the objects in every scene. There’s just as much humor as you would expect from a Pendulo title.   In short, the story revolves around a young man by the name of John Yesterday, who gets into a bit of a pickle when is accused of witchcraft by the Spanish Inquisition. Naturally, such accusations come packed with the usual public humiliation and hardcore torture methods, so it’s imperative to help John escape. However, he also undergoes a supernatural transformation shortly after, and his next problem is the fact that he loses his memories every time he dies and is resurrected.

As mentioned before, the mechanics are fairly classic, which means that most of your in-game time is spent examining objects for clues and helpful items. However, the main difference is that almost every object can be looked at from multiple angles, so you have to move the camera around every time you zoom in. This can be a bit unusual for hardcore fans of the genre, and the implementation is not brilliant sometimes, but it’s definitely exciting.   The puzzles can be quite challenging too, depending on your experience in the field and ability to spot useful items. Dialog plays a crucial role in the grand scheme of things as well, but maybe not as much as in a Telltale production. Lastly, the graphics are worthy of a mention too, because every scene is gorgeous, especially in terms of static artwork. The cutscenes are very well-made too, with neat camera angles and smooth post-processing effects added on top.

In the end, Yesterday Origins delivers in terms of puzzles, gameplay, story and graphics, although the demo can be a tad confusing at first. Hence, if you are a fan of point & click games this should definitely be on your must-play list.