Dropsy

I played through the whole game, expecting Dropsy's kindness to be invalidated, or his actions to be shown as transient and that anyone who once loved him could easily turn around and try and harm Dropsy but it never happened and I think that is what is so touching about Dropsy. It's sort of messed up, there's grief and hopelessness, people stuck in their unhappy ways not sure how or not willing to change them, a whole cavalcade of human emotion and strife but it is so refreshingly single-entendred and honest. A very kind game I suspected all along to turn on me but never did.

The soundtrack completes this package and reveals it as one of those great indie games with an on-point style through and through. I love Dropsy.

This is a really cool, unique take on the point and click genre that has some really creative elements that contribute both to the game's biggest strengths and weaknesses. The aesthetic and atmosphere of this is out of this world, with a richly detailed world with so much life that gets breathed into each aspect of it, with the themes of love and forgiveness being interestingly explored through the eyes of an illiterate, creepy looking, yet deeply compassionate clown who everyone hates. Having the player be put in the position of such an outcast immediately establishes this strong desire to do all you can to try and fix Dropsy's reputation and help as many people as you can to make the loveable goofball happy, but in time, this will change to wanting to help the cast of colourful characters for the sake of just helping them out and spreading the happiness around. Despite the limited interactions you actually have with most characters, they tend to have a very strong presence just from their expressive animations and the way they're made to have their own schedules they follow through the day/night cycle to make the world feel that much more alive.

It's pretty impressive how much personality these people end up having while also being integral to one of the other unique creative decisions of making the game entirely wordless, with any instances of text being replaced either with pictures in the case of interacting with characters, or with a code that the developer doesn't make you decipher at any point for anything else, making the visual language all the more important to convey information, which is done rather well and is such a powerful example of the whole "show, don't tell" mentality. I also find it rather powerful how Dropsy doesn't really show you outright fixing many problems that the characters have and more feels as if he simply offers support, sometimes the entire way to make someone that bit happier just being going up and hugging them. I feel that the message of being able to help people and make them feel that bit better being a virtuous act is lovely, you don't need to be the one to outright solve problems, you just need to make a true effort to help in the ways you can, that already counts for plenty.

The actual gameplay is cool but also a bit hit or miss for me on the other hand. While exploring the town is lovely, there are a number of puzzles the player needs to solve that feel rather obtuse or annoying in one way or another. One of the biggest issues is that while the lack of text is usually fine, it makes certain concepts really hard to grasp when you're playing, with some ways that the game tries telling you what to do feeling pretty tough to figure out, especially since this does have some issues with the big point n click problems of pixel hunting and moon logic causing me to refer to a guide at several points and usually thinking "how was I meant to figure that out?" This aspect of the game did start to seriously wear me down by the end, where more time felt spent having to go back and pick up an item that I didn't see and had no real sense of guidance about it even being there, rather than creatively coming up with interesting solutions to problems that you face. Really disappointing how frustrating I ended up finding this element of the game because it did end up dragging down my overall opinion of it pretty hard in places and if the actual puzzle solving element of the game just felt a bit more intuitive and involved it would've been an absolute smash-hit for me.

I also really love the way that this game delves into some seriously surreal, horrific territory in places without ever feeling cheap in its execution. Any moment where this becomes nightmarish or just downright weird feels entirely warranted in context and leads to some amazing imagery that almost makes the game entirely worth playing on those virtues alone. Overall I think that Dropsy is an extremely cool, unique game that I love in almost every way other than actually playing it. The good aspects of the gameplay get weakened by how vague it can be at times and the way that the day/light cycle both adds personality and tedium to the gameplay loop, being very much a double edged sword in its execution. Even so, this is totally worth playing and I wish more game devs were willing to be this bold in their stylistic decisions.