The Academy: The First Riddle is a mystery adventure game from Pine Studio that takes players to an elite boarding school dealing with the disappearance of a history professor. Players take on the role of Sam, a new student at the Academy. Throughout the game, players will attend classes, read their textbooks for homework, meet new friends, learn about Arbor and its history and solve over 200 different puzzles and riddles in search of answers and the highest marks.
Despite the sweeping splendor and reputation of the Academy, it seems dark secrets lurk just out of sight, and it is up to the player and their new friends to bring them to light. As players walk the halls, they can interact with statues, paintings, and other artifacts to learn more of the lore surrounding the Academy and unravel its mysteries.
The ideas and story behind The Academy: The First Riddle are excellent, and the art style is unique and appealing. Despite this, however, the game falls flat, particularly when it comes to character development, pacing, depth and the overall quality of the riddles. While The Academy itself commands some awe, it does not take long for the building to feel less like a real place and more like a facade, without enough to explore. And, though the developers succeed in capturing some of the wonder of childhood, the game could have benefited from leaning into that idea just a little further.
As players move through the game, they will meet characters, some of whom they may interact with. It is immediately apparent that Sam never says anything, and he rarely has the chance to make choices that impact the game. The exception to this is choosing to take on side quests immediately or save them for later. Sam quickly begins to feel like a passive protagonist, someone who has things happen to him but never really affects those things. While this is not always a bad thing, it may disrupt immersion for the player and make the game feel fairly static. The game could have benefited from a little more opportunity for interaction and some basic dialogue choices for the protagonist to respond to interactions.
The other characters unfortunately do not fare much better. Each character seems like an archetype from most school narratives. There is the overachieving, nosy friend character, the timid rule-follower, the clumsy, good-natured roommate, the overconfident bully, the buttoned-up and stern headmistress and many more. Many of them feel somewhat robotic and lack personality beyond the conventions of their archetype.
At first, The Academy: The First Riddle seems like it will take the player on a magical adventure not unlike Harry Potter. As soon as play begins, it becomes apparent there is little magic involved in the story. It is difficult to get a sense of time or place for this game. There is little technology (though it appears from a riddle that smartphones exist in this universe) and plenty of lore and mysterious events, but the characters dress and speak following contemporary conventions. The effect is an experience that feels inherently anachronistic and somewhat disorienting.
The story starts almost immediately with a clever hook that takes place in a small cinematic. This, along with other mysterious moments sprinkled through the game, immediately grab a player's attention and dramatically shift the tone from bright and fun to dark, mysterious, and almost frightening. Those moments are well-executed and gripping, but there are so few of them, and they are rather short. The pacing feels somewhat out of balance at the start of the game as a result, with more time spent on the school experience than the mystery. This does change and the balance starts to equalize after a time, but pacing issues at the start may make it difficult for players to remain engaged.
The most important gameplay mechanic is arguably the many puzzles and riddles spanning topics from math to geography to police lineups. Some of these riddles are genuinely investing and challenging. However, the quality of the puzzles ranges greatly, from thought-provoking to absurd. Typically, this discrepancy is most obvious between the regular questions that players are required to solve and the optional bonus questions. For example, at one point for an assignment, players are asked to figure out a mathematics operation that does not exist and use it to solve for X. In the bonus question, players are meant to figure out what 60 equals based on a few examples to establish the pattern. The answer to this is genuinely "out there" and will likely require many players to use one of their hints to solve. While the bonus question promises a challenge, many of the answers feel arbitrary.
Overall, The Academy: The First Riddle has an interesting concept and engaging riddles, and Pine Studio clearly displays passion and care with this game. Unfortunately, characterization, pacing and depth issues, along with wide discrepancies in the quality and difficulty of the riddles and puzzles, keep this game from earning top marks.
The Academy: The First Riddle is available June 19, 2020 on Steam for PC, Mac, Android, and Apple OS. It will also be available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and the Nintendo Switch. Screen Rant was provided a Steam Code for the purpose of review.
The Academy: The First Riddle
