Mutropolis is an upcoming point-and-click adventure game set in a distant future where Earth has been abandoned. You play Henry Dijon, a member of an archaeological expedition that has returned to Earth from Mars in order to search for artifacts from Earth’s forgotten civilizations. After a short intro showing this premise through a few basic images, you’re put in control of Henry at one of the sites they’re investigating.
The start of the demo is abrupt, with no lead-in to indicate what you should be doing until you start talking to people and investigating things. I’m not sure if this is because it’s a demo or if the start of the demo will be similarly abrupt. Anyway, as you talk to the other members of the team, you reach the core problem of the demo–getting through an ancient door that the team’s leader, Professor Totel, has become fascinated with.
First, you need to date the inscriptions on the door, since Totel thinks they’re key to opening it but Henry isn’t so sure. Since this is science fiction, you have advanced technology on hand to accomplish this task quickly. Once you locate your geological chronometer, all you need to do is scan the door to judge the age of its inscriptions. It turns out the actual door is covered by a much newer layer, so the inscriptions themselves are also newer. Their next job then is to uncover the actual door, a task which requires Henry’s old-fashioned trowel. Unfortunately, his trowel is missing.
The search for the missing trowel left me conflicted. On one hand, it was amusing, with Henry acting like he was a detective trying to solve a dramatic mystery despite it being a fairly low-key incident. On the other hand, running back and forth to complete all these steps just because someone hid the trowel felt a bit like busywork, especially since it’s the longest part of the demo. However, it could be intended as a tutorial puzzle to introduce the player to the game’s basics through something simple.
Gameplay-wise, it’s a standard point-and-click adventure game. You click on objects in the environment to learn more about them or pick them up–and anything you can interact with shows its name when you place the cursor over it, which reduces pixel-hunting–and then use them to solve inventory puzzles. Opening the inventory is handled in a less typical way, as you use the mouse’s scroll wheel to open or close it. That took a bit of getting used to, but it does work well enough. Of course, you can also talk to other characters, with a list of dialogue choices available if you have multiple topics to bring up. Although there is no voice acting in the demo, the final game will be fully voiced.
Once you finally get the door open, the team encounters graffiti that Totel believes will lead him to the legendary city of Mutropolis. Suddenly, the lights go out and the team comes under attack by unknown assailants before the demo ends.
The demo’s ending is definitely a cliffhanger, although the story didn’t do enough in the demo to really grab me. The standout aspect of Mutropolis, however, is the blend of sci-fi and archaeology. To these characters, our era is ancient history, which creates a surreal atmosphere as they talk about things like modern-day archaeologists might, yet the ancient artifacts they’re so curious about are things that would be normal to us. It’s an entertaining premise, and I look forward to seeing how that develops in the full game.
Overall, the pacing and story don’t quite have my attention yet, but the game definitely has a lot of potential. Mutropolis is planned for a release later this year.
