Snakes of Avalon is a new indie point-and-click adventure game in the classic Sierra/LucasArts style. You may have noticed the word “indie” in the previous sentence. This means that the game was produced as a labor of love by a small team for no money.

As is typical for this type of production, its artistic ambitions are much loftier than most commercially produced fare. It takes place in a nuanced world with a rich atmosphere, and it’s about something larger than its plot. As is not typical of this type of production, the technical aspects are very slick.

Let’s start with those technical aspects. The stand-out feature here, without a doubt, is the sound. Sound is the most important, but perhaps least valued, aspect of any medium that includes it. Most people don’t notice if a movie or a video game has good sound, but bad sound can distract the viewer and ruin the entire experience. It’s a relief then that the sound in Snakes of Avalon is crisp and clear. The voice acting is about what you’d expect from a video game, which is to say it’s not perfect, but for a game of this pedigree it’s fantastic.

The sound design is brilliant, taking cues from classic film thrillers to create a feeling of paranoia throughout. But best of all is the music. It’s composed by Thomas Reign, who has some substantial indie game credits on his resume (most notably, to me, is his work for Wadjet Eye Games). Here he provides a jazzy, boozy score that has a hint of intrigue, which enhances and is perfectly in line with the world of the game.

Snakes takes place in one room, a dive bar. The aesthetic is built to reflect this. The bar is a dirty mess of a painting, and its patrons are crudely drawn cartoons. I’m a bit of a design snob and I have to admit that I was turned off by the character designs. This may be an instance where Snakes‘ artistic integrity works against it. There is a reason the characters look unappealing; they’re unappealing characters. But whether that choice was intended to be a reflection of the protagonist’s view of his surroundings or a comment on the sort of folk that frequent dives like the titular Avalon, I worry that the casual viewer wouldn’t stick with the game long enough to realize it. The presentation of the artwork however, like the music, is pristine.

These elements, the sound, and the visuals are used to set up a unique and surprisingly deep world. There’s a sense of dread permeating throughout Snakes. The dirty bar, the dangerous patrons, and the sleazy music all make you uneasy enough, but then the game’s surreal sense of humor and reality challenging plot instill you with a sense of straight up dread. For example, when you look at a particularly ruthless looking woman at the end of the bar, the protagonist remarks “I think it’s a species of mantis.”

Something evil is happening in Snakes, and you’re not completely certain that it’s from our world. I was thrilled then the game went straight up psychological horror, Kafka-style, in its third act, but I found the ending to be a bit too light and silly. The game’s creators cite Hitchcock and “trippy” films as inspiration. That’s easy to believe as the tense atmosphere that it sustains feels more based around the story that’s being told than the gameplay.

The gameplay isn’t forgotten, however. The puzzles have a unique, surreal logic to them. Many of them only make sense if you turn off your brain, which is appropriate for a game that takes place in a world of drunks. I have to admit, however, that this style of puzzle left me wandering aimlessly a number of times. When I finally figured out how to proceed, I was frustrated by the fact that there would have been no way for me to arrive at that solution other than blindly clicking on objects. Again, I understand the artistic reason for this, but I can easily see many players being turned off by it.

My concerns about players not giving Snakes the patience and thought it deserves probably speaks more to the artistic merit of the video game medium than to gamers themselves. Adventure games are often hailed as the best genre for storytelling, but I have often found the stories told, while enjoyable, to be light to a fault. Grim Fandango is probably the only time that I’ve found the story of an adventure game to transcend its gameplay; to be a story worth telling in any medium. So I was very pleased to find that Snakes of Avalon has a rich story with layered themes, and would recommend it to any gamer who might enjoy the same.

You can download Snakes of Avalon for free here

You can view the Snake of Avalon blog here

Tags: adventure games, independent games, PC, snakes of avalon

This entry was posted on Monday, September 27th, 2010 at 5:00 am and is filed under Indie Games, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.