BROK The InvestiGator is the best adventure game you’ll play this year
I’m sitting here looking at the clock on the wall read 4:08AM. I don’t know when I started playing BROK The InvestiGator but I know that there was daylight outside when I did. I note this because it’s been quite some time since a game grabbed me to the extent that BROK The InvestiGator has. Every single time I told myself that it was time to take a break the game managed to pull me back in and kept me here at my desk until the sun came up.
BROK The InvestiGator is a merging of a few different genres and ideas that really manage to work together. On the surface you have this beautifully animated point-and-click adventure, but underneath you have quite a bit more. The game is also a classic beat-em-up in the style of Double Dragon, something which goes a long way to keep the game fresh throughout. I grew up playing these two genres the most. Growing up on MYST and RIVEN on the PC alongside every beat-em-up on the SNES and in the arcades, BROK The InvestiGator feels like a game that was designed perfectly for me.
The melding of genres manages to work incredibly well. The issue I think most people have with point-and-click adventure games is the dead time that can fill up much of the adventure leading to boredom. There is a lot of walking and clicking, but more so is issue most will eventually face with boredom creep. Not matter how pretty a game might be, a player will hit a puzzle wall and eventually just put the game down, especially in the days before the internet and walkthroughs. With BROK The InvestiGator having a fighting aspect the game opens up and fills up a lot of dead space other adventure games might face.
Not only that, but you can use the fighting game mechanics in the puzzles and areas presented during your adventure. You might feel stuck and slowly realize that you can attack the environment and open up something new. These sorts of moments are what point-and-click adventure games are all about. Those moments where you put two and two together and you have that “a-ha!” moment while playing. And having that extra fighting element to work with makes these moments even more special.
But there is one more genre at play in BROK The InvestiGator as the title would suggest. You are a detective and so the game often falls into these investigation segments that make the game feel like you’re in an episode of Columbo. You look for clues and piece together the whodunit presented to you and choose a culprit, but you have to justify your choice based on the evidence you found or might not have found. And it’s sections like these that really make BROK The InvestiGator unique.
BROK The InvestiGator isn’t afraid to let you lose in all sorts of ways, something I haven’t seen used that often since the days of the SIERRA games of the 80’s and 90’s. But these deaths aren’t cheap like in those games as you can almost always avoid them. Not only that but you can restart from your last save, so unlike SIERRA you won’t screw yourself. Fighting means you have a life bar that allows you to refill via food and meds, but you can also die in combat which forces you to learn the combat mechanics. Then there are other ways to die including killing certain characters or falling into traps that you can come across.
Lastly is the story that manages to keep you drawn in right from the start. There are politics, family drama, conspiracy, and a whole bunch of science and even some stuff that will leave you scratching your head with how out there it gets. There’s quite a lot to process and enough to keep a player hooked. And if you are fearful of point-and-click adventure games because of the puzzles, know that BROK The InvestiGator has a couple of different difficulty levels and also features a fun hint system.
During the game you can collect these “ads” that serve as your hints that you can bank. When you get into a tough spot you can use an ad to give you a hint for the current area. You can use multiple hints until you get the right answer if you are totally stuck on a puzzle. This means that you’ll want to explore and have incentive to explore area outside of just trying to move forward in the gameplay loop.
BROK The InvestiGator is simply a joy to experience. It’s a lot of fun and since the game is fully voiced those long dialogue sections that point-and-click adventure that can put you to sleep don’t happen here. Add in the fact that your choices in the game matter and can lead you down different paths, meaning that you can play the game different ways as certain characters can and might die affecting the ending. The replay value on point-and-clicks isn’t usually great, but BROK The InvestiGator might have you wanting to play again and trying something new. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got another playthrough to experience.
BROK The InvestiGator is a true indie gem that avoids a lot of issues that keep people away from the point-and-click genre
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