by Igor Hardy

Igor Hardy is the co-designer of Snakes of Avalon, and creator of the indie adventure games blog A Hardy Developer’s Journal.

How many genuinely gritty looking cyberpunk games we have there to play? I mean games that not just showcase flashy, futuristic tech, but get that ruined, bleak world of the future look right. Not many, that’s for sure! But Gemini Rue seems to truly deliver that experience – perpetual rain, flickering neons, rusting machines, crumbling skyscrapers… And shady characters in trenchcoats! All this and more presented in glorious pixel art with hand-drawn locations, wonderfully animated weather effects and hard-boiled faces grinning from close-up portraits during conversations. But still that’s just what this game is on the surface, and Gemini Rue is much more than that.

Being an adventure game Gemini brings the plot to forefront and offers an ambitious, hard-core sci-fi story about some specific aspects of human psyche. I shouldn’t reveal too much as the whole is meticulously constructed, but I can say we’re dealing here with two interchanging, not clearly related storylines, each with a distinct central character.

One of those is an ex assassin called Azriel who arrives in a mining colony on the planet Barracus to contact an old friend and maybe even find out something about his long lost brother. Azriel’s plot thread introduces a city where the filthy, rain-filled streets are
roamed by agents of the Baryokudan syndicate. Normal citizens are constantly terrorized and have long given up hope for better life. Even the technology you’ll find around looks exploited, corrupt and degenerate. The vibe of those sections of the game is that of Blade Runner, but with less flash and more noir. Don’t get me wrong though – there’s action, danger, sabotage, numerous break-ins and break-outs. Explosions too!

Then there’s the other player character – Delta Six – who finds himself in a mysterious rehabilitation facility where he is kept prisoner. That part of the game with its clean white corridors, standardized rooms and people referred to us numbers can remind strongly of works like THX1138 and 1984. Delta Six will need to elude despotic doctors, save himself from brainwashing, and figure out whom to trust.

While Gemini Rue is primarily a detailed and uncompromising point & click adventure game, it also offers some important twists on the genre. For example, your characters are bound to participate in occasional shoot-outs realized as very interestingly conceptualized action scenes. In a nutshell, you must master the timing of when to shoot at your enemies and when to take cover, but in practice it’s much more complicated than it sounds. The transitions between these scenes and traditional adventuring are seamless and their integration adds a lot of dynamism to the proceedings.

Another unusual feature is the option to interact with the environment not only with your hand, eye and mouth, but also with your foot! Contrary to what images this immediately brings up in everyone’s mind, kicking stuff (and people) rarely solves actual problems. More often the foot icon serves for situations where a handy leg can create additional balance and support for the player character’s body. And those moments feel actually surprisingly intuitive while remaining creative – after a while it starts to seem strange those 2 spare appendages were so underused in adventure games until now.

All the time the player is accompanied by the excellent music of Nathan Allen Pinard. Very appropriately resembles the aetheral electronic sounds of Vangelis’s Blade Runner soundtrack. As such it works perfectly at conjuring the kind of melancholic-futuristic
atmosphere that classic movie did so well. Another thing worth mentioning is that Gemini Rue is fully and professionally voiced – the benefit of being published by Wadjet Eye Games responsible for such high quality indie “talkies” as the Blackwell series and Puzzle Bots.

And one final thing I really like about the game and can’t stress enough is that none of its visual elements show overdesign, but rather the prevalence of old tech and junk. It’s a consistent and focused vision of an used-up, tired world of the future – instead of a festival of gadgets.

Gemini Rue was created almost single-handedly by Joshua Nuernberger and is to be published in less than 2 weeks by Wadjet Eye Games (with a special limited edition available during the pre-order period). Based on the preview version I can safely say that at the very least it’s a complex dark sci-fi not to be missed by people looking for games with atmosphere and depth.