Allogloom from solo developer Kate at Galactic Ghosty and published by Iceberg Interactive, is a macabre and whimsical point-and-click adventure game with beautifully hand drawn art. It's designed on the logical principles of locating items and combining them to solve puzzles.

Each year I make it a point to play as many new point-and-click adventure games as I can, as it's a genre that will always mean a lot to me. They're games with fantastic stories and puzzle solving that truly immerse you in another world. As a teenager who spent a lot of years in and out of hospitals, adventure games have always been an escape to inventive and engrossing play spaces. Worlds where you can settle in and ruminate on the details. So, when I saw Allogloom, it was a no-brainer to play it.

Video Review: Allogloom

You play as Nora, a young woman who lives in the town Gruesome Grove. Alongside the rest of the community, she's preparing for the ceremony to celebrate the gold moths that rule over their home - insects that eat the dead and rule breakers who try to leave the grove. But when people are abducted, she braves a perilous journey to try to uncover secrets and a forgotten history the grove would rather keep buried.

Where some video games capture your attention with riveting gameplay, Allogloom instantly captures the eye with its beautiful hand drawn art and layered animations. Somehow immersing players in an unsettling and whimsical world. Imperfect soft line work gives infinite personality to the architecture and nature. While expressive faces look almost doll-like as Nora and other characters move their eyes and mouths in a playful manner. Even Nora's clothes have a slight motion for an extra flourish. Everything in Gruesome Grove is designed to balance on a knife's edge between whimsy and horror; an abnormal town where everyone has simply accepted their role in life.

We meet Nora outside her father's gardening store, as her Granny Dot prepares for the ceremony and asks Nora to prepare the family's ritual offering to the moths. This teaches players how to navigate Gruesome Grove whilst explaining the fundamentals you'll use from beginning to end.

Allogloom uses something akin to a simplified version of how Broken Sword controls. There isn't an old school verb system, instead, you explore small environments by clicking to walk, or press on interactive hotspots such as doors or letters. Then, pick-up every object in a chapter, and store them in your inventory. Items can then be combined or used to solve a puzzle within a chapter.

Essentially, Allogloom runs on an approachable, simplified point-and-click system. But that doesn't mean the puzzles are too easy, as they scale nicely throughout. However, it does mean some modern mechanics are absent: there isn't a need for a run function due to the compact environments, you cannot choose whether to grab or examine an item, and you're unable to quickly exit to another environment.

Despite this, I don't feel this weakens Allogloom. Environments are usually compact without the need to pan the camera too much, and take hardly any time to navigate at Nora's walking speed. Although, there are a few story moments that insinuate Nora needing to move faster, and yet, she doesn't speed up. But this could be down to the style of animation. Galactic Ghosty has given environments motion by animating objects at different depths, like falling leaves. She also uses what feels like a pop-up book style when animating the character models and their clothes. It's a simple animation style that works during 99 percent of the game, but falters on the odd occasion.

Allogloom might not have all the modern bells and whistles like a hint system, but it does have a helpful hotspot button to highlight areas of interest. While pixel hunters can choose not to use it, modern players will appreciate the assist. As in the end, it only makes sure players do not miss anything.

Despite this, the hotspot system didn't highlight certain points during a couple of puzzles. I'm uncertain if that was intentional to make you figure out where to use certain items, or whether it was a bug. Either way, it wasn't a deal breaker and just made it feel like an older point-and-click game in those moments.

But like every other point-and-click adventure, the puzzles can make or break the game. It's also the most subjective area, as what is hard for one person, might be easy for someone else. But I can safely say that Allogloom purposely starts off easy, and slowly ramps up the complexity of its puzzles, building up to a finale of well-designed final brainteasers. I never found any to be obtuse; each one logical to what was happening in the story and environment.

After the first initial chapters, Allogloom opens up to chapters with multiple areas, and begins to include puzzles that require exploration, memory, careful examination of notes, and using what you've learned with the appropriate items. Puzzles vary from using a moon cycle chart to open a hidden lock, to multi-step puzzles that require you to solve multiple puzzles to further the main quest. One inventive one requires you to find a way to zoom-in on a painting to be able to figure out a passcode to open a locked door and solve a larger conundrum.

However, finishing each of the eight chapters empties Nora's inventory, which feels like a missed opportunity to use earlier discoveries to create more complex puzzles. A small gripe when every chapter houses their own set of inventive items to acquire and puzzles to solve. All home to a stunningly vivid world of friendly and grotesque monsters that would make Cronenberg and Carpenter envious.

What begins as a quaint and creepy adventure turns into a world hopping mystery steeped in personality that strikes the right balance between visual world-building through art and objects, and expositional dialogue. Throughout, the art design touches on a combination of the gloominess from the game, Fran Bow, and the whimsy of Broken Age, with art noveau doll-like character designs. You can even throw in a bit of Tim Burton, and the body horror of The Thing and The Fly.

But away from her brilliant artwork, Kate at Galactic Ghosty is a talented writer. She captures a clear portrait of a varied cast of characters, whilst keeping a grip on an evolving narrative that twists as Nora grapples with each new revelation. Nora is consistently blasé when confronted with the most gruesome things. It normalises how death and despair are commonalities in her pocket of the world.

There's also a nuance in how humour provides characters with unique personalities while providing frequent levity to what could easily become a very dark world. Such as when a character keeps a decapitated head because it has a nice moustache. Or Nora's relationship with her father, Arthur. Galactic Ghosty uses sharp dialogue full of humorously bad puns to setup a compassionate father daughter bond. Playful and silly interactions that get players invested in Nora's life.

Each new chapter introduces interesting characters from her caring pet bird Hopper, to a sweet monstrous Queen, and her well-meaning brother, Tommy. Like Nora, the entire cast have their secrets and stories to tell. Every character makes you gladly exhaust all of the dialogue options, not to just solve puzzles, but to learn more about them.

But when the visuals and words illustrate the characters and world so well, it's a shame Allogloom doesn't have voice acting to let them flourish further. As a solo developer, it's completely understandable. And like I said, the dialogue still does enough to spark the imagination.

Yet, it's the cutscenes that help successfully tell the narrative: expressive story moments that use nice camera angles to give impactful points emotional weight. Another aspect that wouldn't work if it wasn't for the amazing art and lighting implementation.

However, Allogloom does have a lovely soundtrack by first time game composer Kim. It captures a spooky but playful atmosphere throughout. As even when Allogloom has you do some gruesome things, it still keeps a fairy tale whimsy that's difficult to achieve, let alone maintain for the entire 5-6 hour playtime. Yet, while I did appreciate the ambient sounds of nature, the soundtrack did often stop at points, instead of naturally looping to cater for however long a player decides to spend in any particular scene.

Allogloom has a thematically wide-ranging narrative that spans mental health and trauma, the road to self-discovery, familial secrets, loneliness, life expectations, forced isolation and much more. It is about pushing against barriers to find yourself when the whole world is trying to hold you back. While many twists are quite predictable, it's a charmingly told story that keeps you wanting to accompany Nora to the end of her quest.

For their first video game, Galactic Ghosty have created a gruesomely charming point-and-click adventure with memorable characters and well-designed puzzles. It's a visual feast for fans of the macabre, and even though it uses simplified gameplay mechanics, it still provides a gradually scaling difficulty and beautifully drawn world that you will want to spend time in.

* Review Code Provided By Publisher

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