They aren't animated, they don't show any expression other than the crayon drawings they come with (and even at that only a handful are that lucky), but with words alone there is such a depth of character behind each creature that you meet. The sights and sounds of Desert Bridge are those of magic being made all around you.īut the true stars of this adventure are the characters, each unique in their personality and in their idiosyncrasies. Blending beautifully with the imagery is the music composed by Helen Trevillion (you can actually listen to or download the soundtrack) which instantly finishes out the feel of Desert Bridge, the tinkling bells, the dancing oboe, all mingling together to create a sense of wonder, like the first time your parents took you to a theme park or a museum. We know that Kyratzes is capable of producing far more realistic and three-dimensional images for his games, but nothing creates that sense of youthful and reckless imagination as the cartoon drawings which set the stage for Desert Bridge. The child-like visuals, though seemingly rudimentary, are perfect in establishing the imaginative and inspired look of this strange world. A story of such layers and complexity of thoughts and emotion could easily end up a crumpled failure, but Kyratzes tells it with a master stroke, indeed, it is quite possible that Desert House alone establishes Jonas Kyratzes as one of the master story-tellers in indie game development. A cute, endearing, wonderful story that gradually peels back its soft-edged veneer to reveal something that is indeed a little sinister, thrusting the player from humor into apprehension into sadness. It is familiar in that it has a tendency to break with convention as well as being a game driven by its plot and story, but it's an aberration in that whereas most of Jonas' previous offerings have been dark and foreboding, Desert Bridge is much of the time whimsical bordering on the absurd.Ībove all else, this game is a story. Are you that cunning person they've been waiting for?Īnalysis: For anyone that is familiar with Kyratzes' work, Desert Bridge at once is familiar territory and a departure from the norm.
He does this sometimes, but all of Old Man Bill's creations are starting to get a little nervous, especially now that the power has failed leaving the Horraffe to keep the house alive on back up power.Īnd so Harold has commissioned Jonas to build this window so that one clever and cunning point-and-click veteran could come and help out the inhabitants and hopefully sort out this whole missing Old Man Bill business. Old Man Bill has gone missing (also a totally excellent dude according to the mushrooms), well, maybe not missing, he might just be locked up in his study, but the fish in the bath tub and the rubber duck in the sink haven't seen him in a long time, neither have the chicken in the tower nor the Buttlerware. Harold has a problem, and so do the mushrooms, and Stripes the dinosaur, and the paranoid rabbit, and the Horraffe, and the rest of the inhabitants of the House at Desert Bridge. Who's Harold? Oh, he's a perfectly normal enchanted talking picture frame, a pretty excellent dude as the mushrooms might say. And in this spirit, the House at Desert Bridge is also a window, a very special window, personally commissioned by Harold. If we were to keep following along this train of thought, your browser is also a window, one that allows you to view all kinds of interesting different little worlds including this bit of internet real estate right here. No one knows why this is really, but there you go), and your computer monitor acts as a window that lets you see inside your computer, taking all those ones and zeroes, mashing them up, organizing them, and displaying them into a configuration that is meaningful to you. That is, aren't the eyes the windows through which we observe the world around us? And if that's the case, there must be lots of other windows around the dog-eared pages of your favorite book are windows that let you peek in on your favorite stories, your television is a window that lets you observe the antics of your favorite characters (usually they are doctors or police officers.
All that nonsense about eyes being the windows to the soul is all very cliché and played out, however if we turn that concept on its head, even just a little bit, we do get something sort of useful. Well, it's not actually a game, per se, so much as a trans-dimensional portal or a window, but if "game" is more comfortable for you, run with it. The Strange and Somewhat Sinister Tale of the House at Desert Bridge is an unconventional point-and-click adventure game by Jonas Kyratzes, the same developer who brought us Infinite Ocean and Museum of Broken Memories.
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