I genuinely enjoyed this game. This is one of the best point and click adventure games I played thus far.
Graphically, it is very well designed with a comic feel and style to it. You have different locations and settings to explore.
The soundtrack was also top notch. It really gives you that 50's vibe with jazzy tunes playing on the background. The voice acting was also superbly done and the dialogues were well written. It is like reading pages from a novel.
About the gameplay. it is basically a point and click game. You get to play two protagonist, who happen to have their own unique personalities, wherein you can switch characters anytime you like. You have your puzzles here and there, which I find a little too easy. You have to do a lot of back and forth stuff here. The only annoying thing there is the long loading times.
The game has multiple endings depending on the choices you made earlier in the game. This gives the game a replayability factor, which I always look for in games. It gives you that motivation to see how a game will turn out if you did this rather than that.
I love playing games that have a well-thought-out story. If you love those type of games, I highly recommend this game.

I'm sorry but this is a rather dull and meatless adventure game.

I'm a seasoned point 'n' click fan and have played a LOT of them ever since I started gaming in the mid 80's. I actually like them so much that even what the general public considers sub par, I seem to enjoy. Also, Daedalic has been in the forefront of the genre for quite a few of the later years and I respect them immensely. It sadly all falls short when it comes to this title.

The premise of the game, it's characters, setting and atmosphere all has potential, but the developer just lets you scratch the surface and never let you get involved and interested. Clearly wanting to provoke some thoughts in us players with including gay marriage, interracial relationships, racism and fatal choices. Even throwing in some adult language and beat slang to top it off. Sadly though, without the ability to get to know the characters and their background better and relatively chopped up writing it never gets interesting and sometimes just feels out of place and added for the wrong reasons. It all feels a bit uninspired and messy. It feels hard to get into the story and even harder to care about the characters. I personally felt so uninspired playing this game I almost didn't want to finish it.

Voice overs are ok I guess, but mostly for the main characters, but here too it seems uninspired. Some other characters are just bad. I usually don't let bad voice acting ruin my experience though, so these are not game breaking.

It's not just the story and characters that seems sloppy. The game mechanics, animations and even some modelling also fails to impress. There's a lot of black-outs through scenes making the whole experience chopped and slow. It also seems you only get to see part of the animations before going black-screen. I just got sick and tired of all those black-screens all the time. There's not a lot going on from scene to scene so I would imagine it didn't need that much loading, but alas. The left-click/right-click mechanics are ok but most of the time it is just totally pointless and I feel in most cases they could have left out the one. Also things can be hidden out of view, even the transition-arrow to go to another screen. Many times because of the pop-out inventory/menu on the left side of the screen. You transfer between the two main characters quite easily using the inventory menu. Shame that the game several times leaves you clueless to when you should change. I've seen this done much better in other games. A simple forced switch would be better in a game like this. The background artists seems to have done a good job at least.

It's not all bad, and for true adventure fans it might be worth a playthrough. I would not recommend buying this game at full price though. Look for a big discount and be prepared for something that feels uninspiring. It should take about 5-7 hours to complete, so it is quite short.

It is certainly one of the weakest titles coming from Daedalic, one of the greatest providers of quality adventure games, and hopefully we won't see something this weak again from them.

I'll rate the game 4 out of 10. Below par.

As always, you might have a totally different opinion about this game. So make sure not to decide on getting this game or not solely on this review.

Happy gaming :o)

1954 Alcatraz is a point & click adventure game. Although it usually isn't my preferred format for a review, in this case the text almost naturally grew into a 'pros and cons' list as I wrote it.


+ The voice acting is great. Really.

+ The backgrounds look nice. Not stunning but nice enough.

+ You play half of the game as Joe, a prisoner who wants to escape Alcatraz so he plans and prepares his escape from prison, and the other half of the game as Christine, Joe's girlfriend who's making the necessary 'outside' arrangements for the prison break from within the city of San Francisco. You can switch between the two characters at any time. This adds an interesting dynamic to the game and an extra dimension to the plot.

+ The actions you're required to perform in order to progress the story are very logical. Although, for some people this will mean the game is too easy.

+ You can press the space bar at any time to see the objects you can interact with in any scene. So if you're stuck, this can help. You don't have to use this feature and you can even switch it off entirely in the options menu.

+ Die-hard 1950s fans can choose to play the game in black & white by enabling '1954 mode' in the options menu.


- There's no real story branching until the very end where you make one of four choices that determine how the story ends right after that choice. Well, there are a few choices to be made earlier in the game but the only real difference this makes is whether or not you'll get the Steam Achievement In cold blood in the end.

- Character animation is ugly and clunky. When characters talk, their mouth just opens and closes rather fast as if they were a bunch of yapping muppets. And sometimes you can see a white void inside a character's head when (s)he's talking.

- There are no other animations besides character animation, so the world doesn't really feel 'alive'.

- Long loading times: every time you go from one scene to the next, the image either fades to black, which takes about 3 seconds, or freezes frame for about 4 seconds. After that, you see a black screen for about 3 seconds and then a black screen with a coffee cup to indicate the game is loading. So all in all, that's about 10 seconds each time, which is pretty long for a game like this.

- There are no puzzles at all in this game. I mean there is the standard point & click adventure gameplay (i.e. gathering items and using them on objects in the world or using them on other items in your inventory to combine them into a new item), of course, but there are no other/actual puzzles to be solved, unlike most other adventure games.

- I encountered a game-breaking bug near the end, which caused the game to tell me Christine's part was played and I couldn't switch to her anymore, whereas she still needed to do something that was absolutely required to advance Joe's side of the story. Luckily, I had a save from right before it happened or I would have been stuck before the game's final chapter could start.

- The game needs some tweaking to get the Steam Achievements working. I refer to the 'discussions' (forum) on Steam where you'll find the solution to this problem: disable Steam Overlay for the game and enable compatibility mode for the file 'Alcatraz.exe'. For me, running Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit with Service Pack 1, I had to run the game in 'Windows 7' compatibility mode (so the non-SP mode). The first achievement should trigger pretty much at the beginning of the game, after performing only a couple of actions and leaving your cell, so that's an easy way to check if achievements are working for you. If they're not, try a different compatibility setting and start a new game. Don't forget you won't see the achievements' pop-up like you may be used to (because you had to disable the overlay), so you need to alt-tab to Steam and check if the achievement triggered.


1954 Alcatraz is a pretty mediocre point & click adventure with a moderately interesting story. If you're short on time, I recommend you look for better games of its genre. If you like the point & click adventure genre a lot and have already played the best games, 1954 Alcatraz is certainly good enough to play through once, so in the end I would recommend it in general... but not at its current price of €20! The game's flaws combined with this steep price finally resulted in me clicking 'No, I don't recommend this game'. If you can pick up 1954 Alcatraz when it's heavily discounted (at least -80%) or in a bundle, you may want to give it a try. But at its full price, you will feel that you overpaid, even if you can look past the game's flaws.

+ Fantastic voice-acting; the majority of lines are delivered in an organic, quality manner
+ Well-crafted dialogue options; writing feels mature and immersive
+ Hand-drawn set designs are artistic lend a unique feeling to the experience
+ Everything, from the dialogue, to the set features, feels period-appropriate
+ Boasts a mature and competently developed narrative
+ Soundtrack, of a largely jazz-theme, is absolutely fantastic

- Poor animation quality; everything feels clunky and uncoordinated, but not in a charming way
- Puzzles are, occasionally, woefully simplistic
- Poor secondary character development; most of the support cast is immediately forgettable
- Audio design seems to often be out of sync with the actions of the characters


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Very enjoyable point and click adventure marred only by a well reported issue from several years ago that just simply never got fixed which I spent at least 2hrs trying to get working prior to delving fully into the game. Almost gave up and just played on without achievements.

To get achievements to register the following finally worked for me: turn off steam overlay, run in windows 7 compatability mode, run as administrator, play in windowed mode and validated all files prior to launching game. Hope this helps someone else, poor form Daedalic.

For a game about two lovers plotting a prison break while evading the mob, 1954 Alcatraz feels oddly devoid of passion or excitement. Adventure game addicts with money to burn might get an unremarkable fix from it, since it's reasonably polished and provides 6-8 hours' worth of competent point-and-click inventory puzzles. Those looking for anything more -- a spark of life, perhaps -- should give it a pass.

The setup: Christine and Joe were newlywed lovebirds in beatnik-era San Francisco, until a robbery gone bad landed Joe on The Rock. While Joe hatches a plan to escape the island, Christine tries to find her husband's hidden loot before the local gangsters get their hands on it. The player can switch perspective between Joe and Christine basically at will, though given how the story and puzzles are constructed, it's pretty obvious which one you're supposed to be controlling at a given time. There's also not much you can do as one character until you've completed the immediate tasks confronting the other.

While 1954 Alcatraz supplies the ingredients for a suspenseful lovers-on-the-run caper, the final product lacks much narrative tension or momentum. Most of the game is taken up with Joe and Christine fetching objects across their respective maps, with no sense of time passing or danger building. There are no surprises in the story, and the supposed threat from the mob always feels very distant. The prison break, when it finally comes, is ludicrously simple, lacking in any sense of danger, and over before you know it. The lack of urgency in the story may be partly due to the absence of a fail-state (it's impossible to die in this game), but is mainly due to the slackness of the plot construction.

Another major problem with the narrative is that Joe and Christine's relationship is never adequately developed, despite forming what's supposed to be the emotional core of the story. The game informs us that they're in love, but we're never given much sense as to why they feel so strongly about each other, let alone why they'd risk everything to be together again. I mean, it's not difficult to see why Joe is attracted to Christine: she's cool, literate, a fashionable social butterfly; her sequences have a certain life that the rest of the game lacks. Joe, on the other hand, is wooden, a blank slate, and just kind of... there. It's hard to picture him as either a beatnik or a bank robber, much less holding up his end of a conversation with the vivacious Christine. I realize that opposites sometimes attract, but in the few scenes where we see Joe and Christine together (I counted only two), their dialogue is purely functional and lacks any sort of spark that would have motivated me to see them reunited. The game ends (minor spoiler) with Christine deciding whether to stick with Joe or take off on her own. This should feel like a momentous decision, but given how little time the game spends developing their relationship, her sudden dilemma seems to come out of nowhere, and either decision she might make feels equally arbitrary.

As for the actual gameplay, the puzzles are straightforward and mostly simple, though there are a couple of harder ones along the way. I got stuck a few times, mainly because I wasn't clear on my immediate objective. Pressing the space bar lights up all of the hot spots on-screen, so pixel-hunting isn't a problem. The graphics are reasonably pretty, though some people don't like the 3-D modelling effects. (Personally I didn't mind them, but I wasn't terribly impressed with them either). The voice acting ranges from blandly competent to very good, and the jazz score is terrific. Side characters are amusing but under-utilized, and the '50s-era San Francisco bohemian setting is enjoyable to explore. Though the game's tone is generally light, there are some references to drugs and sex that, while never explicit, might deter parents from letting younger children play the game.

While I'm not recommending 1954 Alcatraz to anyone but die-hard adventure game collectors, I do respect the developer's attempt to make a narrative-driven game with an unconventional story and setting. If the developer can someday marry their appetite for risk-taking and decent grasp of puzzle design with a better focus on narrative buildup and character development, they might produce something really worthwhile. 1954 Alcatraz, unfortunately, is not that game.

My first point and click game completed. I avoided these games for some time, but decided to give this one a try and i have to say i truly enjoyed the story. I was not expected to be caught up into the game as i was. After completing this game im inpsired to play more point and clicks in my library. This game was worth my time and the cast of characters were and are very memorble. Worth the play through for anyone who is into trying these type of games.

There’s this really thin line that all the best adventure games very carefully walk. At the heart of their conception, there are weird and wonderful puzzles that you need to crack in order to progress. Some puzzles play it straight and logical, some are imbued with cartoony silliness, but they all have to be difficult enough to solve for the player to feel satisfied at their achievement, but also not so difficult that the player feels they’ve hit an impassable wall and gives up on the game forever. It’s a really tough line and it’s massively rare for even the most beloved point & clicks to maintain this ridiculous standard throughout. 1954 Alcatraz does not have those concerns. It rarely even tries.

Sometimes, the puzzles you need to solve are so straightforward and easy that it feels more like you’re playing a visual novel rather than an adventure game. Then, there are moments that will send even veteran campaigners running off for an online FAQ, but these are often borne from janky transitions between solving a puzzle and obtaining a solution. Sometimes 1954 gets things arse backwards and you find yourself in a patch of plot you probably shouldn’t be witnessing yet, with very little idea of how it pertains to the continuity. But that doesn’t really matter either; if the puzzles are regularly phoned in, then at least Alcatraz has a decent pop at consistency when it comes to the rest of the game.

Fall foul of the hallowed difficulty line either way, and a good enough setting or plot can still save your game. The early seasons of Telltale’s The Walking Dead contained almost arbitrary puzzles that presented little in the way of reward for completing. But it was carried by the constant threat of losing any of its brilliantly relatable cast that the strong writing bonds you with over a very small amount of time. On the other end of the spectrum, the original Broken Sword contained a puzzle so frustratingly difficult that it’s earnt its own Wikipedia page. But people persisted and broke past it because they wanted to advance the deep historical mystery the bumbling American tourist protagonist kept stumbling through. Both games presented a plot you invested in and a cast you cared about.

1954 Alcatraz achieves neither. Despite hedging its bets by splitting its tale between a convict trying to escape Alcatraz Island, and his wife trying to find his ill-gotten loot to pay off homicidal mafia goons, both threads are woven into the same bland, boring tapestry where nothing of interest ever happens. This is a game filled with mob goons, convicted murderers and dirty police, and still manages to be habitually dull. This is further hurt by the bewildering ability to make the cast completely unlikeable. Joe’s a convicted armed robber, but the game never makes its mind up whether it wants to portray him as a hard-nosed career criminal or an honest guy trying to recover from one big mistake. It’s not like 1954 gives you the freedom through his in-game choices to decide for yourself; it simply has him bounce from one extreme to the other depending on which best fits the poorly written situation he finds himself in.

Read full review here: http://www.honestgamers.com/14343/pc/1954-alcatraz/review.html

I love it the most time. The puzzles arecreative, some the Easter Egg Achievements are funny, The game is a game with a nice story, that is the big strength i like so much so i give this adventure 8.5 of 10 Points you should have fun for 10-15 hours i hope :) and want wish it would be longer :)

This is the only game I have ever played that actually lets you experience an old school prison break.

This point and click adventure is not particularly difficult, but it is very nicely done. Music is great, voice acting believable, art style is charming, and the story is engaging. The different endings and the few choices you can make throughout the game make it engaging as well. The noir style is very beautifully made. The game is charming, but at the same time has certain violent and "grown-up" aspects.

The puzzles are pretty self-explanatory and realistic, so it probably doesn't serve a challenge, especially for those who have played this kind of games before. I was stuck once, but it was rather a game-play mechanic I didn't properly realize.

Strongly suggested for people who are into prisons and noir style.