Alum

Unless you happen to fit into the very specific niche of being into Point-&-Click adventure games with a strong religious touch, you should probably invest your money elsewhere. The story can be very hit or miss depending on your preferences. It started rather interesting but became quite wearisome, sometimes even silly, due to my difference in belief. Furthermore, the game offers okay-ish puzzles. Nothing too complicated. Very straightforward, once you understand the formula. The pixelated art style is fine. But not perfect when you take a closer look here and there. Still, fine enough to play through the game undisturbed. The voice acting is far from top-notch. It did not bother me, however. The amateurish vibe made the experience much easier to endure. I do like the soundtrack, though. It supports the atmosphere of various scenes greatly. It even carries the whole experience quite frequently.

The puzzles and setting are pretty interesting and well done, but the voice acting and story being told is so clumsily handled that it becomes increasingly annoying to endure. I did have to toggle it into windowed mode at a fairly small resolution to even get it to run as some aspects of the build haven't aged well. I would be interested in what this developer could put out with a touch more polish and subtlety.

We gave this game a 5.5/10 when we played it, but it sticks in the mind years later. Alum is a super accurate 90s point-and-click adventure game, except it came out in 2015. It even has a separate configuration wizard before you boot it, and you can technically run it unscaled in a really tiny window. The art direction, music, funny voice acting, and the ridiculous nature of so much of it makes this game incredibly charming and memorable, despite the gameplay and puzzles being infuriating at (many) times. I love this game. Very excited for Wildwood Down, and somehow we missed the launch of Sentry City. Finally doing a playthrough of that soon.

[Recommendation: Neutral] I have mixed feelings about the game. Generally a solid P&C, sometimes lacking polish, but overall really good, yet the story spoiled everything Pros: 1. Overall fine puzzles(maybe even slightly too easy) 2. Story in the first few chapters 3. Varying locations, each with it's unique and often even charming artstyle 4. Humorous at times Cons: 1. Initially nice story, soon gets divine aspect(till the middle of the game it was still fine) and in the second half characters either make some weird choices or some unlikely things occur out of nowhere as it seems with the sole purpose to show how divine power can solve those issues 2. Actually lacks proper backstory. Authors were so keen to portrait evil as the deceiving one that if we change/remove just a few events we could easily make the antagonist the good side(if not for the purely evil proclamations of intentions most of actual actions described in the lore are actually prone to interpretation and in the fight between the two sides both chose to use force) Together with point 1 it makes the story feel far stretched and adjusted just to support the message the authors were trying to pass 3. On a few occasions game can be confusing(some areas are bigger than the screen and it's not obvious that you will find something more when you walk to the side) 4. Mediocre audio 5. Controls aren't actually bad, but could be improved 6. On a few occasions things have to be done in specific order, when one action triggers a cutscene and unlocks loosely related actions/dialogues 7. Some people might not like the included minigames, but in my subjective opinion they we a nice alteration to the traditional gameplay To sum up. It's a good, but slightly unpolished P&C, which unfortunately suffers badly from a weak story. I would say that it started nicely, but soon went downhill. The story simply doesn't unfold naturally, instead it feels heavily guided. which really breaks the immersion If you can live with a cliche and far stretched story and are here just for the P&C part give it a go, but be advised that there are far more balanced titles out there if you're looking for an overall good game

By far one of the best games i have played in a long time. 10/10

Some spoilers ahead! This is a nice little classic adventure game with pixel graphics set up in a fictional world where Christianity is real, shadowy demons appear in plain sight, the believers' holy symbols glow and their God talks to them telepathically, giants exist, and there are magic potions that actually work. All in all, the setting is unique and atmospheric, the characters are relatable, the puzzles are pretty good and refreshing, the graphics are better than an average 2d pixel game (apart from it locking you in a horrible resolution), and the speech is... passable. Where it falls short is actually the ideological base, which is very frayed at the edges and sometimes just falls apart, like that time [SPOILERS] when you're engaging in terrorism and destroying critical city infrastructure in the name of your God and it's seen as good, while doubting yourself and hesitating is seen as bad. Also that time when a demon asks "Where was your God when [SPOILERS] a demon-possessed man murdered innocent children", and neither the protagonist, nor the Altruist, nor the game makers themselves manage to answer this. It's true, the God was right there, he knew about the demon-possessed dude, he could telepathically warn everyone and save them from the murders... and he just didn't. Final score, two out of four rushlights.