Dropsy

Written by Rob Larkin on 9/9/2015 for PC  

I'm really not sure what to make of Dropsy. Maybe I just don't get it. But what I did get, I wasn't enamored with. The game describes itself as "A Point and Click Hugventure," which would boast of some sort of innocence; and yet the very opening scene is a nightmare-scape of twisted turmoil, and the main character seems to be more of an exploitation of mental illness than any kind of naive hero or misunderstood samaritan. The basics of the game is that you play the role of a clown who survived a fire that burned his big top down and apparently killed some of his colleagues and friends. You have a trusty dog that follows you everywhere and you can swap control between the protagonist and his companions.

The crux of the game is to roam about an open world, meeting new people, each one unhappy for some reason or another, and try to fetch whatever it is they are missing in their life to fix their problems. Then hug them. Basically it's one fetch quest after another in a big open world where there is little in the way of directions or instruction. The game ambitiously tries to tell its narrative using no written words. Even the options menu has no words. But it just doesn't work here in so many ways. Menus are hard to navigate, there are no clearly defined goals other than the first trek, and, after that, it's just an open world to explore with a lot of people sitting around complaining about their lives and doing nothing about it. I guess you're supposed to take on their problems and fix them so you can hug them. But that's seems like a goal I have to engineer for myself, as there is no real compelling reason to do it and no discernible reward when its done. Maybe I'm just too much of a grumplestiltskin to be playing this game and I need one of Dropsy's hugs more than any of the other characters. Then I might finally understand the value of do-gooding for the reward of friendship or some other nonsense.

Otherwise, all you're left to do is walk around the terrain to find more people complaining, solve their issue, dispense hug, wash, rinse, repeat. There's a sense of mission in the very first task, but I never got that sense again. Perhaps this is a flavor of open world, but it isn't one conducive to purpose. It's also hard to pick up where you left off, because there is no in-game menu to remind you of the quests you may have begun that aren't finished. You have to trek back to each forgettable character with a problem and try and decipher their thought bubble to sort out what you need to change their demeanor. You can check your inventory (which is inappropriately kept down the front of your pants) to jog your memory of what you have, but those are usually items you've collected and have yet to find a use for, not reminders of the people you've met and are still searching for.

The first thing that jumps out about Dropsy is just how poor the visuals are. I get that they're intentionally employing an 8-bit art style, but there is a way to do it right and a way to it wrong. The right way is to pass over the unimportant details and caricaturize just the basics of a character or object. Dropsy, however, still tries to cram that extraneous detail into its characters and then falls flat. And it would be one thing if it was only periphery characters, but the worst offenders are Dropsy and his faithful companion. So you can't escape the pixelated mess of their faces no matter where you point and click. It's like a bad interpretation of a Ren & Stimpy close up done in 8-bit obfuscation.

The music is pretty poor as well. Most of it is an electric piano with the volume dialed up too high, twiddling off a melody in a small closet. Sometimes the piano man's saxophone-playing friend chimes in and apparently squeezes himself into that same closet. There's also a clown-shoes effect with every step that can be turned on or off in the options, if you can decipher the hieroglyphs of the options due to the aforementioned terrible 8-bit menu graphics which make it unintuitive to navigate anywhere. The one great design decision of this entire game was to keep the clown-shoes noise off by default, because on top of a bad game, the last thing I need is the annoying squeak of a shoe with every step.

I just don't see the purpose of this game other than to further traumatize people with Coulrophobia, the fear of clowns. Maybe this whole game is one designer's brave attempt to overcome their own coulrophobia, but their trauma just kept getting in the way of what they were trying to do. The "Hugventure" subtext, lack of text, and subject content would suggest this is the start of a children's game. But the actual implementation, frustrating gameplay, odd inventory system, lack of clues to accomplish your goals, or even clearly defining those goals, and nightmarish feel would make me think presenting this to a child would be horrific and cruel.

I'm not scared of clowns myself, but I am frightened by the thought of ever playing Dropsy again.