App Army Assemble: Encodya - "Is this point and click adventure an enjoyable throwback?"

Encodya is a point and click adventure game from Assemble Entertainment that follows the story of a young girl and her robot companion. Our reviewer Catherine recently shared her thoughts on the game, but it never hurts to hear a few more opinions. So, we handed Encodya over to our App Army to see what they thought of it.

Here's what they said:

Diane Close

On an Android 4a5g phone this game opens with an over 2GB download of necessary resources the first time you play it. Once that’s done, you’re greeted with some of the crispest, clearest graphics I’ve seen in some time. It runs seamlessly with no glitches or delays. Subtitles are rendered in grammatically correct English, the voice and effects work are excellent, with only some of the speakers struggling a bit with their lines, and the soundtrack is lovely.

In gameplay, you swap between a girl and a robot, and on the 4a5g’s small surface it can be difficult to get close enough to a hotspot to trigger. The hint system doesn’t identify all available hotspots, making it trickier than necessary. Some of the puzzles can be quite frustrating, so this is a game that requires a bit of persistence and patience, at least on a tiny phone screen.

If you love linear, old school point and click adventure games this is definitely one of the best in a while! Some users may be turned off by the story, which makes questionable fun of racism, discrimination and recent politics, but if you can get past that you’ll find a polished classic adventure that’s simply gorgeous!

Chad Jones

When you start the game there are 2 options, story mode (easy) or harder difficulty, after playing this game for a few hours I don't really know what would be the difference between the two. You can ask the robot for a clue but he states he would give you one except if you ask too many times he would basically shut down (I don't remember the exact verbiage). I could see this being difficult to play on a smaller screen because there is a lot you can miss, plus the characters can get in the way because no matter whom you pick to operate the other character is right there beside you and I'm constantly changing characters just to move them out of the way (instead of accidentally clicking on them instead of the object I am trying to interact with).

The music and visuals are great. It's been a great game to play with while I'm snowed in but it does have its little quirks. I love the atmosphere and world the game is set in but the puzzles are a bit difficult at times and there is not any hand-holding at all. Point and click enthusiasts may really enjoy this game but occasional partakers/new players may get frustrated pretty quickly.

Mark Abukoff

This is really a good looking game. Mostly the two main characters. The ability to switch back and forth between them has been done before but I always kind of like that. I also liked the characters you meet as you go out collecting the things you need to collect. The music is good, as is the voice talent. However...
This game would have benefited with even a brief tutorial. The hint system starts off by telling you not to use it very often. That adds to the challenge but for people like me who are more interested in experiencing the story than the struggle of figuring out how to get past challenges, it’s not an inviting aspect.

Add to that the not always precise controls, and the fact that often one character will be so closely grouped with the other, I frequently found it difficult to click where I wanted to. Maybe this would be better on a tablet of some kind but even on the decent-sized screen of my iPhone 13 Pro Max, it wasn’t optimal. I also noticed what seems to be a glitch early on. I ‘used’ my bad sushi wrong apparently, and dropped it. It was gone. An extensive search with the (very handy) magnifying glass failed to turn it up. And there was no way to replace it. So I had to start over. I hadn’t been playing long so I didn’t lose much time, but it annoyed me.

My last note about this game is that I don’t want to see the Dev’s political opinions on display. I just don’t. That’s not why I’m here and I especially would be very unhappy if I’ve spent 9.99 to be exposed to someone’s politics. So here’s what I have to say. This game has lots and lots of potential. It’s gorgeous and there’s a lot of content. But even a short basic tutorial would have helped. The glitch so early in the game annoyed me. And I while I appreciate that some games will have social points to make, I would say to the Dev, leave out the political attack. For 9.99, this is good but could be a lot better. I was disappointed.

Jim Linford

I have played a bit of the game and it is very Blade Runner inspired, which I like a lot. The game doesn't really have a tutorial so took a few guesses and looking at the "controls" for how to control the characters. The game is an old school point and click so it is a slower-paced game. The look of the game is both modern (higher def) and also low detail character models so it reminds me of something like the original Oddworld.

The controls took me a while, one thing that is tricky is when you need to swap a character to reach an object, you need to move the other character out of the way if they are originally occupying the space. It would be nice if there was an animation that moved the characters out the way. this may be too much of a nitpick, also moving in and out of the 3d plane you have to drag the character around and sometimes you can get stopped by the UI. Also trying to select the right thing can be a bit tricky at times,

Ok, onto the good the music and atmosphere is really nice, the story great too. The dialogue options and hint system, controls are responsive (sometimes a little over-responsive) but it emulates an older point and click adventure game with an engaging story. If you are a fan of these types of games and understand the quirks and internal logic of point and click games I would definitely check it out. For anyone else, Maybe give it a go?

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