Truberbrook: A Nerd Saves the World

Truberbrook is a fine example of interesting design, craftsmanship, and dedication of the developer. But as an adventure game, it does not do anything overly to new and exciting. The story is fine, characters are interesting and the puzzles can be relaxingly easy or frustratingly unintuitive.

I really liked the way Trüberbrook looks, and although that isn’t enough to carry even a short game, Trüberbrook had enough interesting story beats and characters to keep me engaged. Mechanical issues and slow pace would have killed a longer or more complex adventure but the game’s imperfections were a tolerable price to pay, given the rewards of experiencing its hand-crafted world.

Reveling in its own eccentricity, Trüberbrook’s quirky characters, stunningly vivid backdrops and engaging dialogue for the most part make up for some flaws in its ambitious but rushed narrative.

With sumptuous hand-crafted visuals and a throwback LucasArts approach to puzzle-adventure gaming, Trüberbook is a treat for genre fans. Well, in part anyway. It’s a pity that all the goodwill the game generates is drained by an unsatisfying story that doesn’t bother to answer even half of the questions it’s raised.

Truberbrook entices the player with its beautiful art style, an interesting story and a plethora of oddball characters, which are brilliantly voiced by the German voice actors. Sadly, Truberbrook falls short on the meat of every point-and-click-adventure – the puzzles. Most inexperienced players will get stuck on many puzzle-sections, whilst seasoned adventure-players will breeze through them. There also is a lot of wasted potential in regards to the overall plot and the characters. A little bit more complexity and more thorough characterization would’ve elevated the gaming-experience quite a lot.

Truberbrook has great ideas when it comes to art design, the story and the gameplay, but only the first one is well developed. It has potential to be a great franchise, but this particular title ended up being a little bit disappointing.

Truberbrook is a beautiful sight to behold, and its story is a great example of light comedy sci-fi. It’s only the overly-oblique puzzles that killed the adventure genre in the first place that keep it from being a truly exceptional title. There’s a valuable lesson here to adventure game developers here — it’s possible to have the best production values and plotting imaginable, but if consideration isn’t given to how players interact with the work, the result will wind up frustrating instead of magnificent.

If you’re a fan of the genre, appreciate fine artwork and want to experience a fairly interesting story, Trüberbrook is worth a look, just go in with expectations in check.

It’s just below average in too many areas — writing, puzzles, and voice acting to name but a few — for me to recommend. But it’s different, and it’s available in a dozen languages and three operating systems, and so it might fill a need for some people. If you’re interested, just wait for it to go on sale. By a lot.

Quotation forthcoming.

An interesting concept that falls apart in its execution, Truberbrook is an amalgamation of disappointments.

Unless you’re a die-hard point and click aficionado, it’s difficult to recommend this adventure. One thing is for certain though: It’s not worth its RRP of £24.99.

Trüberbrook is a gorgeous looking game that will certainly catch the eye of a prospective player. But inside this beautiful packaging, the main course is a strange mixture of confused direction, poor pacing, uneven story and very low challenge rating. It just feels like this is more of an impressive tech demo from an Artist Collective rather than a cohesive, full gaming experience.