A Golden Wake is the first major project from Grundislav Games and published by Wadjet Eye Games. Set during the 1920s, the game’s backdrop is the Florida land boom from the perspective of a down on his luck salesman.
While the setting was definitely unique looking at a classic era of the 20th century, some not so classic adventure game mechanics rear their head to almost make things depressing.
A not so sure sale:
You play as Alfred Banks, a up and coming salesman working at a real estate business set up by his now deceased father in New York. When an incident forces him to leave, he decides to take his salesmanship skills to Florida where the land boom is currently going on. Despite the retro graphics, the game does a good job of selling the period with the art direction, music and dialogue.
The puzzles of A Golden Wake are varied with traditional and not so traditional puzzles. Because Alfred is a salesman, you’ll also have cases where you’ll have to convince someone of your point of view by choosing responses based on different types. These conversation puzzles are a one shot deal and if you fail to complete them, you’ll have to find another way to finish your task.
But the best part of the game would have to be the story as it follows Alfred throughout the decade as he tries to make something of himself. Each chapter moves the story forward as the times change and so does his situation. Without spoiling things too much, Alfred’s life and perception will change and it’s interesting to see how far things go as the decade goes on.
Unfortunately while the story was great, the gameplay suffers due to annoying conventions of older adventure games.
Depression Era:
The problem with A Golden Wake is that the game fall back on one of the oldest contrivances of the adventure genre — trying to read the developer’s mind. The basic puzzles where you’ll have to collect an item to solve something are pretty straightforward and seem even easier than the Blackwell series, but it’s when the game asks you to do more unorthodox puzzles that the game becomes frustrating.
The game’s music and art style keeps to the 20s theme really well.
The issue is that the game challenges you to figure out the right thing to say or to pitch to people by reading them, but how you read someone and how the developer does are two different matters.
This can lead you to failing to solve a puzzle because you’re not thinking like the developer and some of the choices feel very arbitrary.
Here’s an example that I’ll try to say without spoiling things too much. In an early puzzle you have to sell homes to people based on the house itself and the owner’s preference. One guy likes to exercise a lot so from the homes listed, you could assume that a house with a lot of open area for him to run around would work. But instead the game wants you to choose a two story home for logic that doesn’t make sense to me.
And the puzzles where you have to read people are even more confusing. The people you have to talk to are those that you barely met and talked to with a few lines of conversation before you have to convince them. One of the early hints was to “watch the person’s expression,” but when we’re talking about old school pixel graphics, that’s harder than it looks.
What’s frustrating is that every time I did it, I got all but one correct and the game reports that I failed. There is a hint system for these conversations but it’s not really a valid excuse for confusing puzzles.
Trying to read people for conversation puzzles is hard, especially with the player only getting one shot to get it right.
The problem with A Golden Wake is that it tries to frame all the puzzles and conversations in a real world situation but your interpretation of something can be different from mine or the developer.
The Blackwell series avoided this because you’re dealing with a fictional situation and the puzzles were more about using the world’s internal logic as opposed to real world logic defined by someone else.
Crashing:
A Golden Wake continues Wadjet Eye’s MO of trying to bridge the gap between old school and modern day adventure game design. And unfortunately the balance between the two philosophies doesn’t feel as on the ball as it was in the Blackwell series.
While A Golden Wake does feature a great story and more varied puzzles, having to play everybody’s favorite game of “think like the game developer ” is something I don’t think we want to go back to in adventure game design. Your best bet is to play the game for the story and speed through the gameplay as Alfred Bank’s story is far more interesting than his job.
