Framed in pastiche, brimming with memes, and chock-full of ideological folly, the philosophic power struggle of the Cold War era is remade in tongue-in-cheek, point-and-click game, Irony Curtain: With Love from Matryoshka, developed and published by Artifex Mundi.
Playing as Evan Kovolosky, editor-in-chief of a communist propaganda newspaper, you are the babied and sincere useful idiot pegged in between fictional Russia and America’s standoff in the 1950’s. Helping Evan through various puzzles and riddles unfolds the core narrative which provides interesting characters, funny dialogue, and counter-culture tropes.
Irony Curtain: With Love from Matryoshka is a game with an edgy premise, a retro gameplay system, and top-notch aesthetics. Its foundations are built solid, and Irony Curtain manages to be greater than the sum of its parts–the humor is built into the puzzle reasoning, the puzzles push the narrative in both micro and macro scales, and the story keeps you wanting to unravel more and more of its twists and turns.
From the very beginning, Irony Curtain justifies its comedic title with surrealist and absurdist humor. On the tutorial island, the game embodies how it’s going to treat you for the rest of the experience:
Premise – Evan needs to radio a train that he has missed and is presented with a series of boxes to get through in order to reach the radio.
SPOILER ALERT:
Steps –
- Cut through the first rope lock with a razor blade and grab the key inside
- Use the key in the phone machine’s slot of the next box and grab the coins inside
- Drop the coin through the coin slot on one of the lockboxes and get a bigger key
- Put the key in the hole to presumably get the unlocking mechanism to the last box and be rewarded with trashy socks and the number 420
- Call the number extension 420 on the nearby telephone to impersonate an unknown person to secure the combination for the last lock
Not only does the game subvert conventional expectations, but it also laughs at the player for developing any expectations. Right when I unlocked those trashy 420 socks, I knew this was a game that tickled my fancy. And on top of that, the narrative throws expectations out the window as well, creating a fresh experience in an old school genre.
Fresh puzzles that incorporate story elements, that build mechanics progressively more difficult, and that demand a player’s ingenuity to solve are hard to come by, and Irony Curtain has just that. Even the puzzles at the start require some intuitive thinking, and towards the end (as a slight demerit) the puzzles and different item combinations can be a real head-scratcher.
While ultimately not the most challenging point-and-click out there, Irony Curtain deserves praise for the well-oiled integration of its main draw–narrative–with its means of achieving that end.
And finally, Irony Curtain does an especially good job at satirizing and making absurd the concept of ideology in general. Selling, branding, and making cartoonish totalitarianism can come off poorly and can make the ideology of the art preachy and inaccessible. Thankfully, the writing that went into this game and its subsequent voice acting are top-tier. Every level had me laughing, everything worked towards the overall thematic goal of feigned sophistication, and the game worked through common viewpoints with humor of high decorum.
All in all, Irony Curtain is a game you can enjoy in a 30-minute play session progressing through a single stage, and it’s rewarding enough to grind through the whole narrative in a few sittings. The price point of $20 is well-warranted for a game of this polish and the Nintendo Switch port gets the job done. I would recommend this game to a large audience because of its dexterity of humor, gameplay consistency, and beautiful aesthetics.
Score: 9/10
Check Out the Irony Curtain: From Matryoshka with Love Trailer:
Irony Curtain: From Matryoshka with Love is available for Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC via Steam.
Nintendo Switch Review
Recent Michigan State University grad and current Game Studies researcher who plays fantasy RPG's to escape, Smash to compete, and Stardew to chill. Also have a +1 to rage/toxicity resistance due to the many hours sunk into WoW, R6, and LoL.
More Stories
The Hungry Lamb: Traveling in the Late Ming Dynasty Review for Steam
Wishlist Sonorous Deep Down Below Continuous Fight for Survival Game on Steam
Try Out STAR WARS: Knights of the Old Republic Free Game Trial for Nintendo Switch until May 9th