The Journey of AutUmn Review

Game: The Journey of AutUmn
Genre: Adventure, Point and Click
System: Steam (Windows) (also available on Linux)
Developers | Publishers: Artfactory Jalokivi
Controller Support: Full Support
Price: US $15.99 | UK £14.49 | EU € 15,79
Release Date: May 22nd, 2024

A review code was used, and many thanks to Artfactory Jalokivi.

The Journey of AutUmn is a point-and-click adventure reminiscent of the old games by Sierra or Lucas Arts. It’s hand-drawn with fun animations and an interesting plot.

The Gameplay and Story of The Journey of AutUmn

You are a little cleaning and maintenance robot that is part of a crew on a spaceship. Disaster befalls the ship, and you are tasked with something well outside your wheelhouse: you need to take the AI of the ship and escape down to the planet, using whatever you can find to help both you and the AI make it back home.

In classic point-and-click style, you will need to click around each of the new environments, scanning all the creatures you come across while trying to figure out a way to get back to your mission. You are stuck with the snarky AI who regularly comments on your silly choices and needs to wave at all the friendly creatures located on this new planet you have found yourself on.

There also appears to be something of a time element to The Journey of AutUmn; you have a countdown until you will no longer be able to get home. I haven’t quite figured out how this counts down yet. I assume it ticks down as you complete puzzles, but I have yet to confirm if the time ticks down if you just stand there and do nothing.

How The Journey of AutUmn Compares to Other Point-And-Clicks

As someone who has been playing point-and-clicks since the 1990s when they were super popular, I’m quite familiar with the genre. Games like Riven, Quest for Glory, and the fairly recent Lucy Dreaming that I got to review for LadiesGamers are all pretty high on my list of adventure point-and-clicks. I know a thing or two about what makes a good one.

Let’s start with the things that The Journey of AutUmn does really well. The artwork is super fun, if a little child-like at times. The animations are reminiscent of some of the one-man, indie animations I have seen: they are simple but effective.

Overall, the game looks pretty nice, and (minus a few noises that bother me in particular) the sound design is pretty good as well. You get to run around, scanning all the plants, spooking animals, picking up items, and trying to put them all together to help you charge up batteries, fix broken items, and sail across the sea. There is a lot to do, even just on the starting first island, and it’s pretty small.

I ran into a couple of weird things that I disliked and one bug that really bothered me. One thing that I found that The Journey of AutUmn did pretty poorly was the scanning technology. It appears that several things can only be scanned from a certain angle, so when you go to scan it, you have to walk to that specific spot on the ground before your little drone uses the scanner. I’m not sure why I can’t scan the tree while I’m standing right next to it; it’s not a huge issue, but it was pervasive enough to get under my skin a little.

The bug is a weird one; in order to open the menu, you have to press the ESC key, which is pretty standard. I’m used to games using the ESC key to open menus, but also to get out of them. Sometimes, I would interact with something in my inventory, and it would pop up on the screen to explain what the item was. I would hit ESC to try to back out of the inventory screen, and it would open the menu.

Well, if you press the ESC key twice in a row, you get locked onto the menu forever, and you have to restart, losing all your unsaved progress while you’re at it. I’m not sure if anyone else experienced this, but it did turn me off of The Journey of AutUmn quite a bit.

My main issue with The Journey of AutUmn is that the puzzles feel a little unintuitive. I had trouble getting through any part of this game, and not for lack of trying. The puzzles feel a little isosteric sometimes, and the timed element of it makes the game feel rushed, even if it is not timing us in real-time. These things kept The Journey of AutUmn from grabbing me the way similar other games have.

Overall Look and Feel of The Journey of AutUmn

I was pretty excited to play The Journey of AutUmn because of my love of point-and-clicks. I have been playing it alongside another point-and-click (that I can’t name because it’s not out yet, but it will be out soon), and the stark differences between the actions of each made it even more apparent.

The Journey of AutUmn feels like a draft of a game. It’s got great little animations, good sound design, good art, and interesting characters, but it was poorly translated to English, has some rough spots, and the hints don’t actually seem to help very much. There is a lot to love about The Journey of AutUmn and the little drone you get to play as, but it feels rough to play.

Conclusion

I like The Journey of AutUmn, but it feels like this game needs a little bit more love. Overall, if you like point-and-clicks, cute adventure games, and hand-drawn animations, you might want to give this one a try.

Final Verdict: I Like it. 

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