The Red Strings Club

Genre: Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

The Red Strings Club is a Graphic Adventure with a cyberpunk neo noir atmosphere that tells a story of physical and psychological augmentation, counter-corporate espionage, and human emotion and interaction. Players will be tested not only to approach this game’s mysteries intelligently, but ethically as well.

Above all else, The Red Strings Club tells a story that’s not only whip-smart, but truly compelling, with a narrative that puts intelligence, emotion, and ethics right at the center of things, really exploring each of those elements through the characters’ interactions. And in a way, as these characters are acting as avatars for your choices, the game will be exploring you as well.

Players take the role of three characters throughout the story: Donovan the bartender, Brandeis the revolutionary, and Akara-184, the humanoid cyborg. Through their choices, the player will shape the narrative of the game… and in this case, that actually means something, as players’ choices, and in particular their ability to get ahold of information, will play a vital role in determining the course of the story.

This game’s story is built up in part through its atmosphere, which combines LucasArts-esque pixellated graphics with music you’d expect from a game set in the cyberpunk genre (the Vangelis is strong with this one), as well with some more subtle, subdued tunes that perfectly suit the cerebral themes of this game. In short, if you’re looking for a game that is quiet and thoughtful (although not without its moments of violence), this is a game that absolutely delivers the goods in both its story and presentation.

The gameplay here is also pretty inventive, with much of it centering on Donovan’s bartending skills, where players are tasked with mixing drinks to bring bar patrons into the proper mood to spill their guts. It’s a clever twist on the genre that works really well for the game. There are other minigames here as well, such as one where players are tasked with crafting specifically-shaped cyber-implant “pottery”. It’s all fairly clever and worked well enough into the game’s story and theming.

I absolutely love the story and atmosphere here, but there are some flaws in this game. First, it’s a bit short – only about 4-5 hours long. Second, this game’s controls were very clearly designed with the PC in mind, as the game forces you to control a cursor rather than simply choosing selections out of a menu directly, which is frustrating. This same frustration applies to the minigames, which all seem to have clumsy interfaces. Since the game doesn’t rush you and is pretty forgiving of mistakes regarding this stuff, it’s not a fatal flaw, but it can create a fair share of frustration.

Still, despite its short length and control problems, The Red Strings Club is a fantastic Graphic Adventure, with an amazing, well-written, thoughtful, emotional plot, along with a really great atmosphere that matches it perfectly, and some unique gameplay elements that really make it stand out in the genre. If you’re a fan of Graphic Adventure games, or simply looking for a title with a mature, cerebral plot, this is absolutely a game you should play.

tl;dr – The Red Strings Club is a Graphic Adventure with an extremely well-written cerebral cyberpunk neo noir plot, and some great atmosphere to go with it, as well as some great bartending gameplay elements that fit surprisingly well with the game’s themes of emotional empathy and information gathering. It’s not super-long and the controls are less than ideal, but players looking for a fantastic, well-told story should absolutely look into this game.

Grade: A-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2019 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Most Original, Best Story, Best Graphic Adventure Game

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