Blood Nova is a point and click adventure game by the developers Cosmic Void/Joseph Gardner. Its setting is the far future of mankind, which gave me a modest “Foundation” vibe. The backdrop and graphics set the mysterious tone splendidly, but the somewhat quirky zoomer: ish dialogue that all modern entertainment media seem to be written in did take me out of it from time to time. Watch any superhero movie, or the latest Star Wars to understand what I’m talking about.
You play as Princess Love, soon to be crowned empress of the Galactic Empire. While waiting for your coronation, you spend time in some far away intergalactic “lighthouse”, aka space base. As it turns out, the galaxy is filled with turmoil, and this soon will spill over to the place where you are spending time. The station is attacked by some unknown force, killing most of the guardians by poisoning the air. Luckily, you are spared from this fate due to being contained in a protective bubble, and with all staff dead or dying, it’s up to you to figure out what has happened, and who is behind the attack.
The premise of the story, and the mysterious and intriguing science fiction setting are right up my alley, but as mentioned, the dialogue between the characters feels a bit off. It’s not that I demand to have 100% seriousness, but this type of humor is extremely grating to me. This nonchalant, sarcastic tone where stuff rarely matters, and must always be played away with a joke. It often feels juvenile too, for example having the main protagonist going “Yay me” when a puzzle is solved in a tense situation. Mercifully, not all writing suffers from this. Some dialogues are fine as it is, and almost all item description, and world-building are free from this and feels much more serious and well-written, which saves the game.
Visually, Blood Nova looks great. It has a very nice retro feel but still feels modern in a way in how the art is created. The colors are soothing and add to the mysterious background of this particular future. Usually, in these types of games, you control and move about with a character, however, in this game the scenes are for the most part just static images with points of interest to click. While I do enjoy having a character to move around with – in the case of Blood Nova, I think the system used works well and felt immersive. Moving from room to room felt logical, even with the lack of animations and transition graphics.
There is no voice acting, and I’m unsure if it will be added or not, but in my opinion, having voice acting is not crucial for me to like a game like this. What is crucial, though, is having good music, and I’m glad to say that Blood Nova has just that. It’s futuristic with a ting of Mass Effect soundtrack intermixed. Very pleasant to listen to.
The demo lasted for about an hour, and the puzzles weren’t too hard. I did enjoy them, though, since they seem to be strictly in the logical sense, at least so far. Besides the at times cringe dialogue, I must say I enjoyed the setting and atmosphere. The mystery was building up nicely and the story at large seemed intriguing, which has me wanting for more! Looking forward to the main release.
Thanks for reading.
/Thomas
Tom's Gaming Blog 