The sedate pace, however, serves to give the player ample time to absorb the artwork on display, and such is the lovely nature of Deponia’s visuals, that almost every screen is a piece of artist-envying eye-candy. One criticism would be that even when events would suggest otherwise, there was no real sense of urgency to proceedings and the pace never cranked up and dragged the tension with it – it was very laid back, but in all honesty, this suited the game’s overall tone. Enough tiny threads and questions have been left open for a sequel and, indeed, at the time of writing, Chaos on Deponia is being playtested ahead of an Autumn release in Europe. While it wasn’t complex, by the same token it wasn’t convoluted and, aside from some dragging in the middle section, never became bogged down or took itself seriously when it eventually wound to a conclusion it was ultimately satisfying – something that can’t often be said for many adventures. He drives the story along at a leisurely pace and it remains absorbing and entertaining throughout. Whether it is his comments on the things and people around him, or everyone’s reactions to him, Rufus is the centre of the wacky humour that underpins the whole game and in him, Daedalic have created a truly engaging anti-hero.
Ordinarily, a character that is so inflated with a sense of self-importance so lazy, ego driven, deluded, and complanitory would grate, but somehow he manages to be charming and utterly amusing – thankfully. Rather than being dashing, charming, selfless, noble, and humble, Rufus is the opposite. And it is this hero who really hammers together the pieces of magic laid out here. Of course, when the girl is unconscious through much of the action and is carted around in ever more amusing ways by a self-obsessed ‘hero’, it tends to lend a satisfyingly perverse twist to the over-familiar theme. The story may well seem like a simple one – and at its heart, it is – but the developers have made it entertaining enough that the ‘boy meets girl’ bones never really protrude rudely through the narrative. Life is never that easy however, and not only does Goal remain stubbornly unconscious, but some unpleasant characters are on the hunt for her. Ever the hero, Rufus sees her as his ticket to the heady, workless wonder of Elysium, and vows to get her home, while, of course, tagging along for the ride. We leap into his battered boots as he finalises the preparations for his latest attempt at a life of luxury in the arms of one of Elysium’s Orbit Pixies, but all does not go to plan (screws fall out all the time, the world is an imperfect place), and the disastrous result ends up causing a girl called Goal to fall from one of the cruisers passing overhead. Tired of the mundanity of life in Kuvaq (and of the widely-held notion that he should – horror of horrors – work), Rufus typically dedicates his time (and everyone else’s resources) to planning his escape, hoping to secure an even lazier existence in one of the floating cities in the clouds – Elysium.
This workshy fantasist spends his days mooching off his ex-girlfriend Toni and terrorising the long-suffering townsfolk of Kuvaq with his inventions, while dreaming of a better life. Hard-working, however, is not how best to describe the game’s protagonist – the egocentric, serial-slacker, Rufus. Developed by Daedalic Entertainment, and finally seeing a UK release, Deponia takes Daedalic’s trademarks of surreal humour and gorgeous art style and stamps them firmly into the genre’s forehead, in case we missed them previously.ĭeponia takes place on the titular trash planet, which has long been smothered to bursting point in junk, and whose surface is home to several ramshackle towns, cobbled together from recycled bric-a-brac, and giving shelter to many, hard-working inhabitants. Thankfully there are those adventures which manage to find that all-too-rare alchemy and get pretty much everything right. Too often, adventures either fall into the camp of those who look and sound spectacular, but struggle with puzzles and gameplay, or they succeed in the latter while flunking the former.
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