A Golden Wake: Oh Alife, What Have You Done?

I was never much of a fan of adventure style games as a kid which is why I find it oddly surprising that I’ve grown to love them as an adult. Sure the pixelart style brings with it that warm blanket of nostalgia but I really can’t say I enjoyed these types of games back in their original heyday. The renaissance that these types of games are going through has helped me make up for lost time somewhat, especially considering the number of games I churn through in a year. A Golden Wake, developed by Grundislav Games and published by Wadjet Eye Games, is the latest installment in the pixelart adventure genre, sporting craftsmanship that’s well above it’s 1 man studio station.

Alife Banks had everything going for him, a great job in the best city in the world and the respect and admiration of his peers. At least that’s what he thought as his namesake bred jealousy among his peers and one fateful day he was framed for something he didn’t commit. Undeterred however Alfie set out for the wild lands of Miami where a new real estate development, called Coral Gables, was underway. It was here that he’d restore the family name to the glory that it once had, all while making him rich and famous in the process.

I’ve come to notice that there’s 2 distinct kinds of pixelart games: those that use the medium for it’s minimalistic nature (often imbuing their own artistic style into it) and those who seek to recreate the style that was present during the golden age of gaming. A Golden Wake is very much the latter, lovingly recreating the arts style that was made popular by the numerous titles released under the LucasArts brand. It’s not exactly what you’d call a pretty game but the style is most certainly deliberate, an attempt at capturing the essence of what the 1920s would have been like.

A Golden Wake plays like your traditional adventure game although, like many of its modern brethren, it manages to avoid many of the pitfalls that plagued such titles of decades past. You’ve got a small inventory which holds all the items you’ll find on your adventures (of which you’ll ever only have a handful of) and a number of puzzles that you’ll have to solve before you can move the story forward. Some of these puzzles are pretty rudimentary, like having to speak to certain people, whilst others will force you to look around the environment searching for that clue which will allow you to progress forward. If you’re a long time fan of the adventure genre you’ll definitely feel at home in A Golden Wake but even newcomers to the genre should find it easy enough to pick up.

For the most part the game plays pretty well as the puzzles are logical, sequential and can often be solved within the space you’ll find them in. There are a few puzzles which had me stumped for a good while however, mostly because I was following a line of thinking that didn’t match up with the creator’s. It’s hard for me to fault the game for this as once I found the answers it was obvious that I was overthinking the solution. The game also tries to prod you in the right direction by leaving areas open that you still need to visit in order to do something which can be a huge help when you think you were done with a particular area.

There seem to be a few teething issues with the initial release however, seemingly around the Steam overlay and ALT-TABing the game. If I ever answered a chat message from one of my friends within the game it seemed to think one of the keys was stuck down and any dialogue would rapidly flit by. This would be fine if I could, say, reload from a checkpoint to hear it again but unfortunately that relies on you saving constantly. Whilst I don’t think I missed any super critical dialogue because of it (when it happened I’d immediately save and restart the game) it happened often enough to cause me a non-trivial amount of frustration.

Like I’ve said numerous times before I can often forgive even some of the gravest mistakes a game makes if the story is good however for A Golden Wake there’s not much I can overlook, unfortunately. Whilst I can appreciate the effort put into building Alfie’s character up the eventual turn happens far too suddenly and, if you choose certain dialogue choices, makes absolutely 0 sense. The last half is definitely far more engaging than the first which you could potentially attribute to all the setup that happens however it honestly feels like the story just goes no where for a while before finally making up its mind on where it needs to be. Credit is to be given for creating what feels like a realistic depiction of the 1920s however, and not just the romanticised version that many writers would have otherwise created.

A Golden Wake might not seem like an ambitious project on the surface, being yet another pixelart adventure game, however I can’t think of any other game that I could directly compare it to. Sure the adventure game mechanics are familiar and the art style is straight out of the LucasArt playbook but none have tried to create an experience like that found in A Golden Wake. Whilst it’s far from a perfect execution, including a story that goes no where for half the play time and a client that still harbors a few bugs, I do admire the ambition behind it. Still it’s hard for me to recommend it for anyone but die hard fans of the genre as they’re probably the only ones who’ll appreciate the craftsmanship and ambition behind A Golden Wake.

Rating: 7.0/10

A Golden Wake is available on PC right now for $14.99. Total play time was 4 hours with 22% of the achievements unlocked. A copy of this game was provided to The Refined Geek by Wadjet Eye Games for the purposes of reviewing.