THE LOW ROAD Review on Steam

In XGen Studio’s The Low Road, you follow Noomi “Nooms” Kovacs, a newly minted spy, and a hilariously dynamic cast consisting of her fellow spy coworkers and villains. With engaging puzzles and vivid storytelling, The Low Road takes players through the world of corporate espionage in the 1970’s, complete with dashes of slapstick humor. As players progress with Noomi on her adventure, they will learn that it is sometimes impossible to get results taking “the high road”, and that to get a good ending, one must resort to the underhanded methods that we so love to associate with spies.

Gameplay

Players should know before starting that The Low Road is a point-and-click game, with no mechanics other than moving the characters around the scene and clicking on objects and other characters to interact with them. The keyboard is rendered almost completely unnecessary. Clickable and/or interactive objects are denoted by a yellow highlight that appears around them when hovered over with the pointer. This is a clever way of encouraging players to thoroughly explore each scene, as any object shown could be a key component for moving onto the next stage of the game. The only inconvenience to this is that sometimes the player may find themselves missing some small, integral object that they must interactive with and be forced to retrace their steps, randomly clicking on anything they can see in the scene in hopes of it being the required one. Not being able to know what can be interacted with is a flaw that is especially apparent in this game’s many puzzles, where nothing in the puzzle is shown with a yellow highlight at all, and players must figure out whether they can click/drag/swivel a certain component of the puzzle.

The miniature puzzles that players encounter as they move through the game can be either a hit or a miss in terms of enjoyableness. The majority of them can be solved without too much difficulty; some are meant to be easy and comedic while others are harder and require players to move within a time limit. Almost all of the puzzles have minimum or no instructions as to how to complete them. It is completely up to the player to find out the “goal” of the puzzle and how to interact with its components. The Low Road is fairly merciless in regards to hints; there are small symbols in the puzzles that may help players decipher what to do, or certain phrases that characters will say that hint towards how to progress in the game, but that is the extent of it whether or not the player is stuck for 2 minutes or 2 hours. (Call it masochistic, but this reviewer actually enjoyed the challenge that came with the lack of instruction.)

The majority of the gameplay in The Low Road consists of gathering information from character dialog and responding with your own. How the player chooses to respond to other characters determines which direction the game progresses in. There are multiple endings, both “false” and “real”, that players can discover, which is an incentive to play through the game multiple times.   

Story/Characters

The bulk of the beauty of this game lies in its fully-fleshed characters and engaging story. The plot is meant to be comedic, but the character dialog (and the voice acting that accompanies it) is incredibly nuanced and provides surprisingly deep insight into their personalities, strengths, and flaws. It is impossible to not get attached to, or at least somewhat fond of, a character or two after spending most of the game talking to them and seeing how they develop. The Low Road’s official website lists the plot subject as “corporate spies…[in the] automobile industry”, and if players find that a little strange or confusing, they will probably find some of the events in the game to be also so. However, The Low Road has enough to keep players interested throughout its 4 “chapters” to the very end and the basic premise of the plot is simple enough that players can understand and follow through even if they omit confusing details.   

Art/Music

The most distinct aspect of The Low Road is perhaps its graphics, which are 2D and purposefully very flat and almost “angular”, styled after 1970’s television art. Characters move slowly, with almost robotic movements, but instead of that being hindersome, it is charming in the same manner that a children’s picture book is charming despite its simplicity.

As players are exploring different scenes or puzzles, instrumental music is nearly always playing in the background. Along with the music are sound effects that are played when the player interacts with different objects or puzzles (e.g. the whirl of a working copy machine or the grind of a gear). The most interesting pieces are during the interludes as one chapter of the game loads to the next one, in which lyrical songs that are meant to have the same spirit as psychedelia are played. Everything about the music and art in The Low Road is geared towards portraying the time period in which the plot is set, which is “instrumental” (cues laughter) in immersing players in the story.

Rating

The casual gameplay style of The Low Road is probably not everyone’s cup of tea. However, the amazing details and effort that the developers put into the plot, characters, and aesthetics makes this game a 8/10.

Check Out The Low Road Trailer:

The Low Road is available now for PC (Win/Mac) via Steam and Nintendo Switch.