Columnae: A Past Under Construction Game (PC) Preview

After the fantastic experience of Broken Age, I instantly became fan of point and click adventure games. With the ability and freedom to interact with world, brain tingling puzzles and lot of NPC chit-chat only to dig vital information to progress further. And now the Moonburnt studio is setting its foot in the world of point of click adventure game with its COLUMNAE title.

Columane: A story-driven nonlinear point and click adventure set in a post-apocalyptic steampunk world. What makes the Columnae different from other point and click adventure game is its retro-causality concept. This allows the player to affect not only the future but also the past of the main character and the world surrounding him.

The Moonburnt Studio is currently running a Kickstarter campaign and the project has already been 65% funded with 9 days left to go.

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrJqHAyeRDQ[/embedyt]

Story:

The story takes place in an era where the excessive urbanization and industrialization lead the air pollution to catastrophic level.

The world of Columnae is divided into three main parts:

• Deus:

An autonomous high-altitude public space originally proposed to recreate fresh environment benefiting both poor and rich people. Later on, turned out as closed heaven for rich people with permanent shelter.

• Columnae:

Columnae are gigantic metal pillars on which the Deus is built upon. Those who left outside of Deus improvised their new homes in Columnae. The people in here live by parasitizing on resources coming from Machina to Deus.

• Machina:

Huge underground machinery which automatically extracts and process resources and send them via pipes through Columnae and into Deus.

The story uncovers lot of aspects of Columnae society like politics, common people’s struggle, corruption, strikes and riots.

Gameplay:

COLUMNAE is a story-driven game with classic point & click adventure. Like every other point and click game, Columnae allows you to interact with every element of the world. Finding the right items, combining them and talking to NPCs to solve series of puzzles.

Also nonlinear nature of the game allows the player to have one or more alternatives to the quest/puzzle. And of course the retro-causality feature.

Presentation:

At first glance, Columnae graphics looks like a Limbo-like. The silhouetted character in a catastrophic hazy world plagued by corruption, political manipulation, power struggle and poverty.  It all looks so astounding that it really absorbs the player into that world. The trailer shows lots of promising locations like machina, cliff, Columnae and many more.

Expectation:

So here are my expectations from the full version:

• Improved conversation with NPC: When it comes to point and click adventure game, you need to talk with lot of NPC on several interesting and boring topics to get the useful information. So it is very important to make sure that player gets a lot of fun while interacting with NPC. As Columnae features only textual dialogues instead interactive voice dialogues, at few points I was losing interest to read all the dialogues. Also the surrounding noise balancing is needs to be improved as it causes a bit distraction sometimes while reading the dialogues.
• Lots of different locations to explore with occasional, daunting Puzzles.
• And strong voice overs for story narratives.

Crowdfunding is always been a risky ride for the developers with its ups and downs. But COLUMNAE is worth exploring due to its post-apocalyptic steampunk world. And if it completes the campaign successfully then it’s definitely one of the exciting and unique game to look forward in future.

Playable Demo?

Want to experience the adventure in post-apocalyptic steampunk world, like right now? Then check out the free Playable Demo.