The point and click adventure game is something that once appeared to be a part of video game history. While the likes of The Secret of Monkey Island and Myst once dominated the gaming world, the genre went into a rapid decline as the industry turned its sights elsewhere. Thankfully, the indie scene has allowed traditional adventure games to make a comeback, and The Sundew from solo developer Agnès Vuillaume is the latest title to showcase the strengths of the genre.
The Sundew takes place in 2054 and revolves around Anna Isobe, a cyborg cop in Shibukawa, Japan. It's a cyberpunk game at its core, set in a dystopian future following a horrific war, and the cyborgs that were once seen as the future of humanity have been shuffled into the sidelines in favor of more traditional drones and robots. Nonetheless, Anna still has very useful skills, and her investigations lead her into some truly dark places.
Structurally, The Sundew is very much an old-school point and click adventure game. Anna walks around different locations, grabbing everything she sees and talking to everyone to find solutions to logic puzzles. Thankfully, The Sundew avoids those notoriously obtuse puzzles that once plagued the genre, with a clarity of purpose to each item that avoids those nonsensical examples from the likes of the King's Quest series.
This gives The Sundew more scope to build upon the basics of its point and click mechanics, with some decent puzzles to solve that build well into the game's story. Meanwhile, Anna's cybernetic implants also play a part in gameplay at times, helping to solidify the cyberpunk tone that The Sundew carries throughout its runtime. Sometimes the genre-led restrictions do become a bit irritating, however, and this is in part because its more expansive elements show just how interesting this could have been.
Visually The Sundew also works well, with sprite-work that is both reminiscent of the adventure games of old and evocative of other prominent cyberpunk stories. What The Sundew gets right is that cyberpunk can lean heavily into darkness and be truly effective, with a dark palette and foreboding environments. The world of the game looks grim, seedy, chaotic, and corrupt, like those dusty moments of Blade Runner 2049, and it's all the better for it.
This also follows through to the plot of the game, which certainly fits its cyberpunk skin through nods to genre juggernauts like Neuromancer. The Sundew turns its eye towards automation, artificial intelligence, and the impact that technological advancement without humanity in mind will have. The Sundew is also a perfect length, as much like fellow indie cyberpunk gem Disjunction it is a relatively short experience that does everything it needs to do and doesn't wear out its welcome.
Point and click adventure game fans will also note occasional nods to other classics from the genre's history, in particular The Secret of Monkey Island. Depending on the player's enjoyment of references this could either be cute or irritating, as it can take the player a little out of the moment. Either way The Sundew doesn't need to rely on pastiches of games gone by, as its story and charismatic lead character are enough to give it momentum.
The Sundew is not perfect, of course. Along with its occasional over-reliance on references its controls can be a little jarring on the Switch, although it's likely on PC things run smoother. The quick-hint buttons to highlight interactable objects also sometimes aren't as clear as intended, although any fans of point and click games will no doubt have learned the virtue of patience before picking up this game.
Overall The Sundew is a strong and engaging point and click adventure game with a compelling story and enough strong puzzles to keep players scratching their chins for its run time. Fans of the genre will find things to love here, and the fact that it comes from a one person development team makes it all the more impressive.
The Sundew is out now for PC and Nintendo Switch. Screen Rant was provided with a Switch download code for the purposes of this review.