Gemini Rue

Gemini Rue is a point and click adventure, originally created by student Joshua Nuernberger then published by Wadjet Eye Games. Wadjet Eye Games’ Dave Gilbert provides voice acting for a few minor characters, and has obviously recruited the voice actors because some of his favourites are here such as Shelly Shenoy, and Abe Goldfarb (who played Joey in the Blackwell games). I really liked Azriel and Delta Six’s voice (Brian Silliman).

You can enable the Director's commentary in the options menu, but the icons are overly large and clutter the environment. Commentary is delivered in a way that is obvious Joshua is reading from a script.

You play two characters. You have Azriel, a hitman turned cop, who is searching for his brother. He begins his investigation in the city Barracus, initially seeking out a man named Matthius. The other character is Charlie aka Delta Six who is trapped in a rehabilitation facility. However, there seems some shady behaviour since their process involves wiping the prisoner's memory. I think the assumption is that Delta Six is the person who Azriel is searching for, but there’s some big twists in store.

There’s comparisons to Blade Runner with the sci-fi dystopian feel, and the questions raised about identity.

Azriel has a communicator device which contains phone numbers, and clues. When you use a city terminal, you can drag and drop words instead of typing them to avoid typos.

The pixel graphics can mean there are some objects that blend into the background which means there’s a few instances of pixel hunting. You generally use items as intended, so there’s nothing illogical here. Sometimes you will need to “use” characters to help you out such as using their strength to move an obstacle for you, or use their small size to squeeze through a narrow gap.

The menu which you use to interact with objects has icons for: hand, eye, mouth, foot, as well as your inventory. There’s only ever a few objects in your inventory because you often pick up items and then shortly use them. There are times where you want to check what you are carrying, but this can be awkward as there is no means of looking at your items independently of this interact menu; so you have to right-click on an interactable object within the scene you are in.

Some interactions are very clunky such as opening doors and this is even worse in the facility with Delta Six. The location is a bit empty and has long corridors and multiple doors to open. To switch floors, you have to interact with the elevator button, wait for the elevator, get in the elevator, press a button, wait for the elevator, exit. When you have a simple puzzle sequence, it takes ages even when you know what to do. Since it is easy to miss a few objects, having to backtrack is just painful.

There is a feature to Double-click which uses the previously used action; which is often not useful. The idea is that if you use “mouth” to speak to someone, then you can just double-click on another person to speak, but if you double-click on a door, your character tells you he cannot use his mouth with that.

When you access the map in a terminal, it looks like the game is massive since the city you are in looks large, and then you can zoom out to see the planet and even multiple planets in that system. However, the city is quite constrained to a few streets, and when you leave, you just get to see one new building, then end up on the facility, seeing a few familiar corridors. You will visit the same apartment building many times, because different people you are looking for all seem to live there. I assume this was a budget constraint. Some of the puzzles involve working out which door you need to go to. So there are many floors and doors, but many you just need to walk past.

There are combat sequences where you pop out of cover and shoot. If you press ctrl, it powers up a gauge to pull off a headshot - if you manage to fire in the green section before being hit yourself. The enemies will fire on a repeated pattern, so they pop out, fire several shots at one location, then go back down to reload. It’s a case of learning the timing so you can charge up a headshot - or that was my strategy anyway.

I found the story to be very satisfying and loved the twists and turns. However, with limited locales, and some tedium in the gameplay, it’s not a brilliant game overall.

Its an adventure game with a cyberpunk theme. The game reminds me a whole lot of Blade Runner, because you play as a cop, the bleak artstyle (with lots of grays and blues) and also because it also offers a very atmospheric soundtrack which is very similar to the one in that movie.

Now this game is another reminder of how much i suck in adventure games. There were very little sections i actually manage to get across without resorting to a guide. Im not sure if this is just my issue, or that the solutions were in fact hard to get to, so i wont really complain about it. I will just say that it makes the game less fun to actually play. Fortunatly its not a long game. It controls like the Monkey Island games. Visually its pixel art is ugly, to the point that it may be difficult to find key elements to the puzzle in the background.

The main reason to play the game is the plot, which is actually very well done. Its great, but i cant say much about it without spoiling it, i will just say that it is very much worth playing the game just to see how the story turns out. Besides the direct story, the game also has some interesting thoughts about social control and what makes an individual. Basically it uses the cyberpunk theme to great use, more than just the background in which the story plays.

Its one of those games where it feels better to think about than to actually play.