Encodya [Xbox]
Set in Neo Berlin in the year 2062, Chaosmonger Studio’s Encodya is a point-and-click adventure that tells the tale of a 9-year-old girl named Tina and her robot companion SAM-53. You’ll take control of both characters, being able to swap between them on the fly; Tina was who I controlled for the bulk of the gameplay, as she is much quicker to move, only switching to SAM when I required him for something out of reach, to move heavy items, or for specific dialogue with NPCs.
If you’ve ever played classic LucasArts titles like Tales of Monkey Island, then you’ll know what to expect here. Exploring environments, looking for any items that might be of use, and keeping an eye out for anything to interact with, and exhausting all of the conversations with available NPCs; there were a few moments that I did find myself to be searching the same areas repeatedly, unable to figure out what to do, or what item(s) to use or combine, but with a bit of trial and error, I’d get there eventually. The crux of the story is that Tina and SAM must uncover whatever secrets may be held within SAM’s coding, put there by Tina’s father when she was just a small baby - before he disappeared, and before her mother’s passing.
The visual style of Encodya is gorgeous, with a Studio Ghibli-esque look to the world and the characters within. Each location is heavily detailed, which really helps to make the world feel deep and fleshed out, despite being quite small. The streets are peppered with ‘cyber junkies’; VR addicts that spend every waking moment tapped into cyberspace, and it really makes the world appear quite bleak. On occasion you’ll reach certain points in the story that will trigger short cutscenes, which enhances the story with the actions of the evil Mayor Rumpf, the secrets your father had been working on (and that you must uncover), and more.
You’ll be able to interact with people you meet, and your conversations will vary depending on which of the two characters you are actively controlling, with some NPCs requiring either Tina or Sam to prompt particular conversations in order to progress. There’s humour in the dialogue, from the sushi chef making a joke about a looping animation to save on disk space to the electronics store owner mentioning the familiarity of Darude Sandstorm. The voice acting is well done, and with everything being fully voice acted, you get a lot more of a feeling for each character and their personalities. The soundtrack, composed by Yann Latour, is deeply soothing and blends perfectly with the vibe of the city and each of its varied districts.
There are 10 secrets to be found as you progress through the story, with these varying from interactive objects, to funny little references. They are recorded in your pause menu, so you’ll have an easily visible way to see how many you have, although sadly if you’ve missed one, it won’t necessarily be obvious until it’s too late. If you get stuck at any point, which is easily done as sometimes it’s not as clear as you’d think when having to combine particular items, or using items on things in the environment; you can ask SAM for a hint, however the number of hints will be counted and recorded against your overall stats. Use too many hints, and you could miss out on a couple of achievements.
For achievement hunters, Encodya is a relatively straightforward game to nab the full 1000 gamerscore (or trophies on PlayStation/achievements on Steam), especially because you can have three individual save slots - very helpful if you’re unsure if you’re gonna miss something and need a backup save to put your mind at ease. There’s an achievement available for completing the game in under 4 hours - which can be done without too much of a struggle. I’m a fast reader, so I was able to skim through some of the dialogue-heavy interactions in order to try and cut my time down, as the full voice acting can be a bit slow at points, and I’d get all the information from the subtitles - this led me to come in at 3 hours and 20 minutes, whilst still getting 100% completion. If graphic adventures are your thing, then you can pick up Encodya for £24.99 on the Xbox Store.
In the end, we decided to give Encodya the Collecting Asylum rating of 8/10.
Are you interested in Encodya? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Assemble Entertainment for the Encodya Xbox review code!
