Broken Age was going to be it. A new dawn of the point and click adventure; Tim Shafer back in his prime, Double Fine bringing point and click BACK and everything will be good again.
Broken Age wasn’t the new dawn. Double Fine didn’t bring it back. HomeBearStudio may just have.
NAIRI: Tower of Shirin, despite its terrible name is pretty good. Pretttyyyyy, prettttyyyyyy gooooood.
It starts off fairly ho-hum – a young girl’s parents are in peril and she must escape with her life. The clichéd story beats soon pave way for great characterisation which truly bring the world to life, together with colourful, playful environments to explore. With a cast of animals and creatures, from delightfully cute to downright dark and sinister, it’s a playful adventure with the wondrously emotional twists and turns along the way.
With a beautifully drawn, not quite Ghibli-esque, art-style bringing it all life NAIRI: Tower of Shirin does a good job of bringing you into its world and keeping you there. Best played with the Switch’s touch screen, bringing a tactility to the gameplay you can’t get through more traditional methods, HomeBearStudio have created a world you want to explore, prod and play with. Often full of surprises, it encourages playing around with the environment and it’s a joy finding some unique dialogue or expression from a character pay off as you think *I wonder what happens if I touch that…*.
Puzzles do ramp up later on, but never resort to having to combine random inventory items until you find nonsensical solutions. Controls are sharp and never frustrating, leading to a pleasant puzzling experience all the way through. There are however a few niggles in the game logic – in one instance I had to use a drill, which was in my inventory for a hole in a wall. Rather than prompt me for the nail I was looking for, the game waiting until I found the nail and then asked me to go find the drill I already had. A few issues like this don’t take away from the game, but the rough edges are visible likely due to budget or time constraints from the developer.
There’s not much more to say on Nairi without ruining the delightful story or set pieces you may encounter, so if you’re a fan of the point and click genre but have been burnt by recent outings, I heartily recommend NAIRI: Tower of Shirin as something to get stuck into. It’s pretty, engaging, has solid puzzles and runs smoothly (I did only play in handheld mode, so can’t comment on the docked experience, but the game feels at home with me sitting on the sofa poking at the touchscreen).
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