Introduction
Apopia is an adventure game with platformer elements and minigames, taking place in the mysterious, fallen kingdom of Yogurt. Currently, the prologue is released, with the remainder of the game coming soon. With only a few, hazy memories of her mountain hike with her mom and how she got into the kingdom, Mai sets on a journey to help Yogurt’s denizens fight back against the malevolent BOSS while piecing together her memories!
Developer: Quillo Games
Released: Planned for 2022
Price: TBA
To the Kingdom of Yogurt!
Players can control Mai, navigate the land, and interact with interesting objects and people using the keyboard. While the game primarily includes point-and-click staples such as an inventory holding items to use in puzzles, Apopia integrates elements from other genres such as platformers or even rhythm games. This allows the game to have a lot of variety without getting stale. The prologue’s puzzles and minigames aren’t challenging by all means, including powering on a vending machine by changing the power bulbs to the correct colors, or luring a rabbit brute into a trap to escape, thankfully avoiding the use of moon logic puzzles that point and click games are known for.
Let’s go overthrow BOSS!
Mai’s journey through the Kingdom of Yogurt has two purposes. The first is joining Princess Moly, the former ruler of the kingdom, to overthrow BOSS and end the bullying of non-rabbit species that happens under his watch. The second is learning about the events that led Mai to the kingdom and most importantly about her mother. Yogurt itself, for all its problems, is a lighthearted and whimsical place with many characters, including rabbits and cats! However, everything involving Mai’s mother is in complete contrast to Yogurt, almost always going for dark aesthetics, colors (especially red) and glitching, emphasizing her psychological manipulation of Mai.
While Apopia shows a lot of potential with its gameplay and dual-purpose story, the writing is probably the weakest part. There wasn’t a lot of proofreading done on the game, so the punctuation and spelling aren’t the best. In addition, Mai has a habit of stating the obvious, using lots of slang like “OMG” and constantly bursting into “haha”-style laughter, all of which didn’t click right with me, although your mileage may vary, especially since she is a young person.
In Conclusion
Apopia has many elements positioning it to be a great indie hit. The lighthearted story, the intriguing underside of the setting, and the cute cartoon art style make the demo an easy recommend for fans of narrative-based games, only held back by the quality of the character writing.
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