If the full game turns out to be anything like the demo, sci-fi fans have something to look forward to in Aurora: The Lost Medallion. Produced in Greece by the indie team Noema Games, Aurora: The Lost Medallion is an episodic 2D point-and-click adventure game set in a distant galaxy. The game’s demo, an episode entitled Hide & Seek, focuses on establishing the main personages that will play central roles in the rest of the game and introducing players to the types of puzzles they will encounter should they decide to indulge in the forthcoming episodes of Aurora: The Lost Medallion.
As the title Hide & Seek would imply, the demo for Aurora: The Lost Medallion revolves around a game of hide and seek played by the titular character of Aurora and her eight comrades. Aurora acts as the “Vulture” in the episode, which entails seeking out the children scattered around the seven main areas of the technologically advanced cave they all live in. Some of the children are quite easy to spot lurking behind objects such as lampposts, but others prove to be quite difficult catches.
Although the set for Hide & Seek is quite small, it’s clear that Noema Games invested much time developing it. All of the areas in the game were drawn by hand. At first, every area that players enter will be shrouded in darkness. Key items will still be visible, however. To actually catch the kids, players will need to have Aurora interact with these various items and think about where each of them could be of use. For instance, players can almost immediately pick up an empty glass, but that same glass won’t be handy until later in the game in one of the other sections of the map.
The puzzles in Hide & Seek straddle the line between being clever and being too difficult to decipher, as their answers aren’t always intuitive and can be tough to work out. However, this also means that players will never feel like they achieved a merely a facile victory when they do manage to tease out the solution to one of the puzzles.
After spotting any specific child, Aurora can talk with that person. In this manner, players can receive hints about where other kids may be hiding and ascertain what life below the surface of the frozen planet Eedor is truly like. In addition to learning about the red-headed Aurora’s feisty, inquisitive nature, players come to know of the animosity that exists between Aurora and Bruna, of Bruna’s relationship with Dambo, of Bobb’s excessive snacking, of Sylo and Nylo’s scheming, and much more. Noema Games does a fantastic job of creating an environment that, although evoking a feeling of alterity in terms of the children’s technology and history, is in fact easily relatable to all.
As Aurora catches the children in a given area, that section of the map will light up and reveal new items or pathways. The fact that players can only access certain areas within a requisite number of turns by catching other children means that there’s a specific order in which the children need to be caught. In a game that initially emanated the impression of freedom with regards to the order in which players could track down the hiding children, this felt like a slight letdown.
Overall, the demo for Aurora: The Lost Medallion should give players hope for a fulfilling 2D, point-and-click puzzler. Through their roughly hour-long demo, Noema Games adeptly sets the stage for their bildungsroman situated inside a science-fiction world. Players should be on the lookout for when the full game is released.
Check Out the Aurora: The Lost Medallion Hide & Seek Demo Teaser:
For more information on Aurora: The Lost Medallion or to play the demo, please visit here: https://noemagames.com/
I'm a recent graduate of Columbia University. Gaming has been a passion of mine my entire life; I enjoy everything from RPGs and FPSs to stealth and narrative-driven games. I love the deeply immersive quality that good video games inherently possess, and am looking forward to highlighting games worthy of acclaim. When I'm not studying or reading, you can catch me playing games like Uncharted, Dishonored, The Witcher 3, and Far Cry.
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