How far would you go to save your pet? Fetch is the story of a boy and his dog told through a charming but simple point and click adventure game.
Game Name: Fetch
Platform(s): Android, PC, iOS
Publisher(s): Big Fish Games
Developer(s): Big Fish Games
Release Date: January, 2017
Price: Free Trial, $3.89 full unlock
The benchmark for point and click games was set by LucasArts in the mid 90’s. Lately however, the genre has seen a departure from the traditional pirates, aliens and spirits to smaller more personal stories such as Life is Strange, or the memeorably weird Dropsy.
Fetch, while being set in a dystopian world of advertisements and corporate control, has a sincere focus on personal desires. The Boy wants his dog back, the 3 Blind Mice want to be reunited. As opposed to the baddies, who are mindless alien blobs and literal emotionless robots.
Story is the main focus of Fetch. Most puzzles are small and simple, sometimes building towards a larger chain reaction, but very rarely challenging. Especially with a full walkthrough available from the options menu. It was hard to take the puzzles seriously and they sometimes felt like more of a distraction than a challenge.
The gameplay is pretty standard point and click fare; an NPC will talk about something they want, a nearby switch will have 3 settings, basically experiment with everything and you will get through. I really like the use of in-game arcade machines. Beating them provides items to progress the story and tend to be a lot of fun.
There is no real item management, with the inventory screen is more of an achievement page. There are a tonne of acheievemnts in the game, including one for each arcade game and collectable (super depressing) dog collars.
The game has a consistently cartoonish art style that varies slightly per area. The opening stage is grimey and dark, but backed by big glowing Embark industries billboards, the Jungle feels wild and dangerous and the arcade games look silly in a believable way.
Outside of the arcade machines there is very little music. Environmental sound effects occur with every action and were mostly enjoyable, but there were a few repeated sounds that grated on my nerves.
Chapters are bookended by small cut scenes explaining big chunks of the story and may have been my favorite part. In fact I probably could have watched the cutscenes back to back and understood the full story without needing to play the game. But if I did that then I wouldn’t have watched the 3 Blind Mice destroy a robot by singing it to death after feeding a bridge of hungry skulls. I feel O made the right choice.
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Summary
Pros:
Pretty art style
Heartwarming story
Memorable puzzles
Cons:
A little too easy
Story ending is a little predictable
Collecting discarded dog collars feels… weird.
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If Tim Schafer wrote a childrens story...
