The action of The Red Strings Club takes place in a typical cyberpunk future. Conglomerates reign supreme over society, while most people use implants of some kind to improve their lives or their productivity. Donovan remains refractory to transhumanism. This bartender like no other refuses any raise and finds happiness in his daily activity, which consists as much in serving drinks as in collecting and disclosing various and varied information from his customers. Following the impromptu arrival of a female cyborg named Akara, Donovan finds himself embroiled in a dark story of "generalized psychic well-being", which would be imposed on all implant owners. We won't tell you more about the scenario, because the game is essentially based on the dialogues, the discovery of the story, and the relationships between the different characters. So the less you know, the more likely you are to enjoy the adventure.
The soundtrack is clearly worth the detour, and it is not the only quality of the game. We can only salute the quality of the dialogues, as well as their arrangement in a system of uncompromising branches.
But we can still tell you that the atmosphere is particularly successful. We find ourselves immersed in a real dark and cybernetic thriller, carried by perfect music, often jazzy, sometimes electronic, but always melancholic. The soundtrack is clearly worth the detour, and it is not the only quality of the game. We can only salute the quality of the dialogues, as well as their arrangement in a system of uncompromising branches. Depending on the questions you ask and the answers you give, you can completely close screenplay doors and therefore miss entire sequences. Some characters will never even appear on screen if you lacked insight a few minutes before. Only problem on this subject: the game has a very short lifespan (between three and five hours), and in such a case, it is rather inappropriate not to reveal to the players all the content produced by the developers...
RED OR BIG TWINS?
In general, the production of the Deconstructeam studio clearly lacks a chest. It's very simple, all of the action takes place in only three or four different sets, fixed moreover. In order not to be a textual adventure, The Red Strings Club still offers us three mini-games … two of which have handling problems. Thus, at the beginning of the adventure, Akara must make implants using a potter's wheel (the Cyberpunk aspect takes a big hit, but let's move on). For the player, he will have to sculpt the clay using tools of different shapes, and struggle with mouse controls that clearly lack precision. We are then entitled (and on many occasions) to the cocktail creation mini-game, which is more interesting but still just as unwieldy. Before each discussion with a client, Donovan may serve them a drink based on the individual's "psychic polarizations". Basically, different states of mind are displayed on the silhouette of the client (for example "desire" or "madness"), and you will have to select the one that seems to you the most likely to help you gather information. To do this, you must move a cursor over the chosen area, pouring different alcohols into the glass, each alcohol allowing you to move the target in a certain direction. The idea of influencing the dialogues to come in this way is very good, the mechanics of this mini-game are not uninteresting, without being revolutionary, and the execution is quite catastrophic. The screen dedicated to the preparation of cocktails is particularly ugly (while the rest of the pixel art graphics work rather well), while handling the bottles with the mouse is quite difficult.
In general, the game really seems to have been finished in a hurry, without including everything that was originally planned.
Finally, the last mini-game consists of calling different people on the phone, selecting the voice you want, a voice modulator allowing you to copy the voice signature of most of the characters encountered in the adventure. By choosing the right combination of voices/people called, you can thus obtain useful information for progressing in the story. This activity is the closest thing to a real adventure game, but it only lasts a few minutes. In general, the game really seems to have been finished in a hurry, without including everything that was originally planned. Thus, many questions remain unanswered, especially on the whole supernatural aspect, briefly mentioned but never explained. Why does Donovan seem immortal and can't leave his bar? Who is the character with the skull and crossbones who comes to visit him twice? Finally, the game is constantly advancing with its big clogs on the themes it wishes to address. With an interracial homosexual couple and a transsexual character, we feel that the "progressive" question is working for the developers. The player is even called stupid if he ever answers during a dialogue that women are not particularly oppressed these days. Knowing that the HR manager, the engineer (spelled "engineer" of course) in charge of the "Generalized psychic well-being" project, the marketing director, the lawyer and even the CEO of the conglomerate at the center of the adventure are all women, the women's cause seems to be doing rather well in the gaming world! In short, the ideological strings of The Red Strings Club are a little too big, while its sometimes mediocre realization accompanies a weak lifespan. Difficult to cry genius in these conditions...
