Gloomy Juncture: This psychadelic neo-noir, puzzle-filled adventure will have you hooked

I’ll be honest, I’m not omniscient, as much as I wish I were, and there will always be indie games that fly under my radar of detection until something, or someone, thrusts them into my line of sight. Gloomy Juncture is one of those games, and I can’t help but find myself upset that I had no idea about this gorgeous game’s existence before the SixOneIndie Showcase on September 18. 

Side note: I fell in love with the cat as much as I fell in love with the game. That had to be said. It was, I’m sorry to say, the real star of that little segment outside of the game itself.

Anyway…

Gloomy Juncture, developed by solo dev Filipe Rodrigues, is an entirely hand-drawn first-person point-and-click(ish) tale that feels like going on a bad trip after ingesting some Yayo. It’s dark in both theme and style, but also gorgeously executed on both counts, and it’s yet another game that will live in my head rent-free until I get to play the full version. 

Point-and-click roots

Although it’s not a stereotypical point-and-click with a fixed view of each scene and the ability to click to control your character, Gloomy Juncture clearly has roots in the old-school genre, and those roots shine through the dankness of the setting. There’s an inventory where picked-up items go, puzzles to solve that let you progress, and a set route you need to take to reach the next stage.

You control your character using the WASD keys, and there are hotkeys for things like opening the inventory or crouching. In that sense, you’re very much put at the heart of the adventure and story in a way that feels centralizing and refreshing for the point-and-click genre. The inventory system is intuitive, selecting to equip items by pressing E and then using them within the world by pressing the same button again. 

Yes, the point-and-click inspiration behind many of Gloomy Juncture’s mechanics is obvious to anyone who has ever played another game from the genre, but the true joy of this delightful indie gem lies in two things: the themes and the art. 

A bizarre trip into a neo-noir tale

There are a lot of themes in Gloomy Juncture that make it painfully obvious that this is one game that is aimed firmly at the more mature players out there, not to mention enough swearing to make even the most potty-mouthed sailor blush. It’s dark, gritty, and undeniably bizarre, but those things are what make it so entirely addictive to play.

In the demo, you’re thrown into the kitchen of what may be a bakery or a terribly executed cover-up for the distribution of the powder-based substance “Yayo.” You need to clean up some vomit, but in true homage to the point-and-clicks that inspire the game, getting that done requires a multi-step process filled with pleasantly challenging puzzles and unfathomably strange moments. 

Even as you play and progress, collecting the items you think you might need (or anything that isn’t glued down, if you’re a seasoned point-and-click hoarder), things just seem to happen that don’t entirely make sense. I mean, I finally cleaned up the vomit and somehow managed to break physics, so I either inhaled a little too many mixed chemicals, or the Yayo is stronger than I thought. And potentially airborne.

Hand-drawn, down to the details

When I say that Gloomy Juncture is entirely hand-drawn, I really cannot put enough emphasis on the word ‘entirely’. Everything, from the items to the characters to the backdrops, was originally drawn by Rodrigues, then magically imported to create this gorgeous game. I don’t know how that works; I’m not a game dev or technologically minded, and frankly, this seems like witchcraft in my eyes. I can, however, appreciate it for its astonishing, if not a little bizarre, beauty.

The characters are, for lack of a better term, cuboid. The one character that I’ve had the questionable pleasure of meeting was, however, filled with so much personality that I instantly decided that I didn’t like him very much, which I think was the point. My own character, although never seen (at least in the demo), has his own distinct potty-mouthed personality, and it’s easy to become enthralled with who this man is and what his story might be.

As I said, I had never heard of Gloomy Juncture before approximately 24 hours ago, and yet here I am gushing over just how incredible it’s turning out to be. If you like what you see here, I urge you to go and wishlist the game, download the demo, and fall in love with this indie masterpiece right alongside me.