Paradigm

Point and click adventure games occupy this weird spot in my mind where they're really fun to play, but thinking about playing them doesn't excite me, then I actually boot one up, start looking at everything and figuring out puzzles, then I'm reminded of how great they can be. In that respect, Paradigm had me hooked from the difficulty selection, and it didn't let go for the whole six or so hours I played.

First and foremost, this game was a laugh riot. Most of the comedy is pure absurdity, and while there's some real weird bits that might annoy some people, everything here hit me perfect. Most of that's the fantastic voice acting—shout out to Anna Brisbin getting me attached to a water heater in like half-a-minute. And that wide variety of comedy too, I was constantly getting surprised up to the very end. I was clicking on absolutely everything and saying every dialogue option, just to seek out every hilarious piece of writing. I don't think there's a greater testament to the game's quality than that.

But then there's the "game" part, where every adventure games inevitably has some shortfall from a particular leap in logic being too far, or a puzzle being so obvious, there's no sense of accomplishment from figuring it out. For Paradigm...that never happened. The puzzles always felt just challenging enough that solving them felt rewarding, and never too far off with its logic that I got frustrated. I could attribute that to some competent puzzle design and well thought-out item pickups, but honestly I think the world presented here was just so enthralling that I wanted to interact with everyone, which by extension fed me all the info I needed to solve these puzzles. Organically giving the player the tools they need to win, just by making a setting I want to actively engage with; it's a lot of effort that pays off well.

And the soundtrack is worth the $7 on Bandcamp, go jam to those phat beatsies.