Alright, I'll start with the bad.

1. The story is actually kinda eh.

2. More neutral than negative, but it's a typical adventure game. Hence, some puzzles feel like artificial obstacles instead of being there to drive the story forward.

3. It's buggy. Nothing TOO serious or game-breaking, but it is buggy.

4. A nitpick here, but anyway. It's logical, it's fairly easy, it's good. But it's not imaginative in the puzzle design, and it lacks quirkiness.

Now we can all go home, right?

WRONG!!!

It's actually the most pleasant experience with an adventure game I've had since forever. What makes it such?

1. The delivery. While the overall story licks ducks, the individual chapters, the characterisation and the writing are superb. I love how they wrote the protagonist, and I love pretty much all the dialogues. The game is funny and it oozes personality and charm.

2. The flow and overall playtime. It's really well-paced once you get in the mood for typical adventure games' pacing. The length is just right to hold interest while not stepping into 'I love it, but ugh, let it end already' territory. Every chapter has a distinct theme, and the atmosphere is really good. At some point suspence kicks in, and playing it becomes *interesting*.

3. The art style and the music. Gotta say, I'm not drooling over the art style, but can't not admit that it's good. There's not much music, and what's there isn't always AWESOME, but there're moments when IT IS.

4. Some puzzles are really cleverly made. It doesn't make them quirky, they don't require creative thinking from you, but It's hard to ignore how well-done they are.

So if you're an adventure games fan, go pick it up. I'd say it's easily worth full price. Just don't expect a life-changing beautiful experience from it. Expect some fun times instead.

¹📚　Similar games: Secret of Monkey Island, Deponia series

²🌍　Voice-overs for the entire script in English and German



Tested with:

Windows 10 Professional, 64-Bit
Intel® Core™ i7-7700K, 4 x 4.2 GHz
Nvidia MSI GTX 1080 (8GB GDDR5X)
16GB DDR4 RAM; Samsung 840 EVO


If you found this review helpful, feel free to check out my...

⭐ Curator page | 👪 Steam group | 👾 Discord[discord.gg]

At a glance, Unforeseen Incidents is a run-of-the-mill indie game with a cliche storyline and simple and occasionally confusing puzzles. Upon deeper examination, that remains a fairly accurate assessment.



First, let's discuss the elephant in the room: the art. The artstyle is exquisite. While it may lack the flamboyance or fluidity of games like Hades or Ori and the Blind Forest, the hand-drawn visuals and environments give the game a distinctive charm while establishing a unique atmosphere. The game features a wide variety of hand-painted environments ranging from middle American towns, a large city, and snow-capped mountains among other tableaus while managing to capture the essence of every scene perfectly. A screenshot from any moment would make for a high quality desktop wallpaper.



The cast is likable, the interactions feel human, and the voice acting is superb. While the story itself breaks no new ground, it executes well in conveying feelings ranging from peaceful homeliness to suspenseful peril. The banter is witty, and the storytelling is compelling. The protagonist’s deadpan delivery and occasional 4th wall breaking make him easy to like and relate to as a human. The other characters are all additive, each with unique personalities and distinctive voices. The English voice acting in this game is so well executed that it is hard to believe that the original script and voices were in German.



The gameplay, while largely carried by the stellar writing and art, also stands on its own. A traditional point and click puzzle game, the interface is not always intuitive. The solutions also tend to not be intuitive but will make sense and come to you if you take a step back to survey your options from the standpoint of what you might do in real life. When that didn't work, the solution would often come later after a good night's sleep. Only once did I have to look up a walkthrough for the game, and it was after I had already beaten the game and wanted to get all of the achievements. As long as you click on everything you see and habitually press the spacebar to reveal what you can interact with, the gameplay is fun and rewarding.



This game has a lot of love put into it. From all the meticulous attention to detail such as character interactions with background scenery and unnecessary yet delightful dialogue, this was clearly not executed per a corporate checklist but was instead a passion project. This extra mile for small details is something that can only be found in indie games, and this game has additional appealing quirks worth noting. The soundtrack, while not necessarily memorable on its own, complements the game well in helping to establish the atmosphere. Bugs in the game are almost nonexistent, and while I wish the game supported cloud saves, the local save files can be found in /Users/<UserName>/AppData/LocalLow/Backwoods/Unforeseen Incidents/ for Windows and ~/.config/unity3d/Backwoods/Unforeseen Incidents for Linux. And finally, on the topic of Linux, the game supports Linux natively. This might sound minor to a Windows user, but a Linux port for an indie game is no small ordeal, and it speaks volumes about the commitment of the developers, as Linux has an extremely small market share. I plan to replay the game on the Steam Deck when it comes out, as the game’s mechanics are perfect for a gamepad/touchscreen layout.


Before answering this question, let me describe myself as a consumer. I am morally shaky: I don’t think twice about pirating indie games from starving artists, and when I do pay money, it’s usually because I couldn’t find anywhere to torrent them. I also rarely buy games at retail prices. That said, I paid full price for this game and can safely say that it is worth every cent. When you buy an indie game, you’re not just buying a game but investing in the developers in their future endeavors. Likewise, in writing this review, I’m not just trying to recommend a good game but also trying to convince you that Backwoods Entertainment deserves your money to justify the work that goes into future projects of similar quality.


If you can overcome the relatively steep cost to content ratio (about 1-2 dollars per hour of playtime depending on how good you are at puzzle games) then Unforeseen Incidents is a hidden gem worth the full $20 asking price. If twenty dollars is steep, then this game is worth putting in your wishlist and buying on sale for about twelve dollars. Either way, the minds behind Backwoods Entertainment have proven themselves to be capable of putting out high quality games, and I can’t wait to see what they do in the future.

Is this game a masterpiece? Well, it is one of the better point and click adventures that has been released during the last 10 years.

A young man who lost his mother recently and spends his time working as a handyman gets drawn into a large conspiracy when a deadly disease breaks out in his hometown and everyone is quarantined. Fortunately a disease hospital is rapidly built outside town to deal with the virus outbreak and treat the patients... I have to say I really enjoyed the backstory. Kind of realistic.

Using classic point and click puzzles you have to find out the truth behind the disease. Collect items and use them on hotspots or other inventory items, talk to people, decipher simple codes, run back and forth between the locations... and use your multi-tool. It contains a knife, screwdriver, scissors, pincers, a bottle opener, file & wrench. Many problems can be solved with it, I would love to take it with me to use in other adventure games as well. The main problems to solve are always easy to spot (repair a car, find a journalist,...), so most of the time you know what you try to do and don't just have to try everything on everything. You can still do that, of course.

The game features full voice, was drawn in a unique (and good looking) art style, has awful animations, and the ususal comfort options like double-click to leave a room, "press SPACE" to show hotspots, the ability to save anywhere, short loading times, cutscenes, no dead ends, no dying (ok, you can die but then you restart a few seconds before and can try again). Guess this means that it is a polished production, it seems to be bug-free as well.

Conclusion:
Thrilling classic point and click adventure.

Good Pn'C.
A few issues make it not great though. Silly issues.

One big problem is the illegibility of several documents that contain vital clues. This hampers the gameplay. They strain the eyes, plus I had to physically walk to my monitor with a magnifying glass to decipher some.

Other mistakes reduce the general enjoyment:
- The Drag n' Release UI instead of the smart Point n' Click one. Seems to be a common disease in recent games. Too many devs wanting to do not as well as their predecessors just for the sake of changing things.
- The keyboard-typing need. Again, it's called Pn'C for a reason. The Drag n' Release n' Type Crap genre has no future.
- The slowness of movements. Another proven Pn'C feature that was overlooked: running.
- The transitions between landscapes, with black screens getting longer and longer. Some memory issue, which at least can be 'fixed' by quitting and restarting the game.

There are also a couple of arcade bits that should have no place in a Pn'C.
I'm able and they annoyed me, so forget this game if you've got motor difficulties.

On the plus side, the storytelling is good, involving, the characters likable.
All fully voiced.
Puzzles make sense, although that's occasionally arguable. At least they integrate very well in the storytelling.
I like the art style and the atmosphere.

I had a good time, which would have been better without the technical flaws I described.

Unforeseen Incidents certainly isn't a bad game, but I only have the "thumbs up/thumbs down" options here, no middle ground for me to give...and if the question is "do you recommend this game", then I can't really say yes to that question.

Unforeseen Incidents is a point and click adventure game that wants to tell a real mystery story with high stakes and intrigue, but in my opinion doesn't do a very good job at it.

The story does a decent job at building up a mysterious organisation as the enemy, and the parts where you piece by piece find out more about this organisation are probably the best parts in the game, but the "actual" villain has almost no screen time, is lazily tacked into the final scene, and didn't really add anything to this game.

The main character is again, decent, but not terribly interesting (afterall, we've already seen a lovable goofus loser that loves to tinker with technology in an point and click adventure made by a german studio), and he has barely any character development.

It seems that all of the story elements the developers wanted to have are here, but they're just not explored and fleshed out enough, and therefore fall right into the uncanny valley of story-telling. Dont want to spoil a lot, but to give just one example: the main character's past is mentioned about two or three times in a textbox or voiceline-flashback, otherwise mainly ignored while it's actually supposed to be a critical part of the story.

Also, the story ended quite abruptly and when I finished the game I didn't really feel like I actually done anything in the game or invested time in something interesting...


Many reviews describe the voice acting as charming and oustanding, but for me it was just sort of...flat. There was never anything really bad, it was just so bland and average.

Regarding the music: In some scenes the music is actually used well, especially in the research/detective/mystery parts, but then it simply fades away after just a few short seconds and sort of takes the tension and intrigue of the moment with it as well.

Regarding the graphics: Clearly, Unforeseen Incidents is a game based on a very distinct art style. It's entirely subjective if you like this art style of course, but it didn't really do it for me. I like the overall ragged, scribbly look of the world, but I think some designs are just too overdone (worst offenders are the main character's legs and neck). Also, I think more time should have been invested into actual character animation. I can forgive the choppy lipsyncing, but some scenes lose in tension and immersion because of how the characters slide across the ground in a straight line.
However, a huge plus point is certainly the use of lightning. It makes some of the screens look reeeal nice.


Now to the actual gameplay: Unforeseen Incidents is a rather classic point and click adventure and doesn't really reinvent the wheel - sadly, it doesn't even have a perfect wheel to begin with if you understand this stupid metaphor.

The puzzles that lead from point A to goal B through the use of combining, collecting and understanding items are fine, if you look over the fact that the answer to something may lie in a new dialogue option a character just gets, even if that character had already proven himself to be useless/no longer useful.

But there is also a second kind of puzzle in this game: The kind where you have to find the answer to something by interpreting "philosophical" information, clues and riddles. I'm sure there are a lot of people that like these puzzles, but for me the answer would often be too far-fetched - and of course, interpretation is something purely subjective, so if the normal painting of a forest doesn't mean "salvation" or some ♥♥♥♥ to you have fun trying out different combinations or visiting every single location and character again.



Some "minor" things that would be "quality of life improvements" here:

-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ does the main character walk slowly.

-An ingame notebook where you could write down passcodes or how a puzzle is supposed to function would be nice. Could also contain current updates on characters or critical information, so you dont forget some important voiceline when you play this game over several days.

-The inventory has to be activated by hovering the mouse at the top of the screen, and this gets really annoying if you want to try to combine your items in the inventory. Couldn't it have been made so that if you press "i" or some ♥♥♥♥ the inventory bar just pops up and stays there?

-Some elements of the puzzles are just not fun...example:
there is a puzzle where you have to find a very specific stone, but there are other, "wrong" stones on the ground through several areas and screens, so you have to go through these areas until you pick up the correct stone.

-The save slot function only tells you the date of the save slot, not the exact time when the save slot was created.

Oh boy.

I was going to give this a positive review, because aside from chapter 2 this game was more or less enjoyable to play. But then I played the final chapter of the game... I was expecting some interesting twist or basically anything other than the extremely generic and overdone story-line that ended up in this game. I actually wish I could refund this game because I found the ending to be just that bad. If you are looking for an original and compelling story for your next game, look elsewhere.

I wanted to like this game, and the fact that it does so many things right actually just makes me more frustrated with some wasted potential. The game seems to have an identity crisis where it doesn't know if it wants to be serious or if it wants to be quirky and funny or cute.

Lets get this out of the way:
-I loved the animation.
-The voice actors did a bang up job.
-Every chapter outside of chapter 2 had enjoyable problem solving.
-You can tell that they really tried to make a great game.
-No bugs?

Things that bother me about the game:
-The ending.
-Chapter 2 was not fun to play IMO.
-The main character seems to be a sociopath, in that they witness some terrible and horrific plot events in chapter 1, and then they just keep up with this dopey, sit-com, sarcastic humor as though they were utterly unaffected by those events and this destroyed any hope of immersion I stood to enjoy.
-Music is basically folk-y elevator music.

Thats it I guess. I recognize at this point I am not missing a career as a professional game reviewer.

The best adventure game that I've played in years!
Well-written (until the final chapter) with good puzzle design and a unique art style.

Premise: A sudden, lethal contagious disease strikes your backwater of a town, and it seems that it's not a natural occurrence: someone or something may be behind it. And it's up to you - just a local handyman - to figure out what's going on and to stop it.

At least for an adventure game veteran, the puzzles are on the easy side, but... that doesn't really count as a negative. Rather, it means that its puzzles are actually logical. It even explicitly goes out of its way to subvert a classic "insane adventure game logic" setup in the first chapter, by turning a classic puzzle ("I forgot my ID at home") into exactly the non-issue that it would be in real life. When I realized what they had done it actually made me laugh out loud.
Like that puzzle, it also - for the most part - stays away from the overly convoluted puzzles that are hallmarks of the genre. The main exception being a fire-making puzzle in the mid-game that, as a stand-alone puzzle would have been fine, but in context is as contrived as it gets.
While the puzzles are on the easy side, that does not mean that they are bad - I was genuinely impressed by some of them, and even if I quickly figured out what to do they were an absolute delight to solve.

All of this is presented in a sketched graphical style that is at the same time very simple and quite detailed. It is odd but totally works for the game. The voice acting is generally excellent, and the protagonist comes across as genuinely sympathetic. And while it's not a comedy game, it's still filled with plenty of humor.

All of this said, the quality unfortunately takes a sharp nosedive in the final chapter, both in the writing and the technical implementation. But up until then it's excellent, so it's well worth the purchase!

I wanted to like this game. I'll briefly touch on the positives. It has a unique art style, the characters were initially entertaining and fun (more on that later), I didn't encounter a single bug, and the initial story is intriguing and engaging.

Now the bad. There are more than a few puzzles that require solving not through intelligence but pure random luck. However, this is common in point-and-click games, even the good ones, where sometimes you're reduced to trying to just combine random things and click on everything until something magically works.

But it gets worse, there are a couple of puzzles that require you to click to move your character to a place in a time-sensitive manner which can be infuriating.

And then there's a part where if you don't have actual, real-life knowledge of how to input commands into a computer then you won't be able to progress without a guide.

But the cardinal sin is the amount of time-consuming backtracking you have to do. This game has some pretty large maps and you often have to yo-yo between the left-most and right-most section to solve puzzles. It's mind-numbing.

All of this I might've been willing to overlook if the story hadn't fallen flat on its face towards the end. What starts out as an engaging and potentially horrifying mystery with a vast and complicated conspiracy surrounding it ends up having very trite, disappointing motivations behind it with a cardboard cut-out for a villain. Even more egregious, characters suddenly start making monumentally stupid decisions to ensure dramatic things happen. I was so gutted that a game whose plot showed so much promise from the trailer and first few chapters wound up going where it did.

Ultimately, if you're really desperate for a point-and-click puzzle game and have played all the usual suspects already, then give this one a shot; perhaps you'll enjoy it more than I did. Otherwise, I'd give it a miss and give any of the Monkey Island, Blackwell Saga or Darkside Detective games a shot instead.

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Rating
8/10 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Unforeseen Incidents is a point and click adventure game set in a beautiful hand-painted world. An unknown disease is spreading across the land. A chance encounter with an affected woman throws handyman Harper Pendrell into a world of mystery, danger and conspiracy. Harper must use his handy multi tool and whatever else he can get his hands on to solve the many riddles and puzzles along the way. With the help of a multitude of different characters he meets on his journey, Harper must unravel the tale before it’s too late.

The game is a classic point and click adventure game. You interact with a number of different characters running through dialogues and asking questions to get answers to various puzzles or advance the storyline. There are 4 chapters to the game. Each chapter will last 2-3 hours. Each chapter has its own theme and like any good point and click adventure the chapter ends on a cliff hanger for the next chapter. Each chapter sends you off to a different place and there you will meet different characters along the way. Various new places and characters appear as the storyline progresses. The main characters are Harper Pendrell, the local handyman; Helliwell, a freelance journalist and Professor MacBride, a biologist. Harper uses various items in his inventory to solve riddles and puzzles along the way.

Gameplay: 🕹️
The mechanics are nothing new. You use your mouse to highlight items in your inventory and can drag these items onto other objects to interact. i.e. A key in your inventory can be dragged on to a door to open the door. Occasionally you will need to use objects in your inventory with other items in your inventory to create new objects to solve a puzzle. I never found any of the puzzles to be unreasonable or to not make sense. I got stuck on many occasions but when I found the answer It was a slap on the forehead moment shouting “Of Course” not an annoyed shrug mumbling “eh!?”
The main objective of the game is to unravel the mystery of the deadly virus that seems to be spreading across the land. Harper will need to talk to many different characters to get information that will progress the storyline. On many occasions you will need to solve puzzles to progress i.e. fix a car. This might involve finding parts for the car which might involve solving further puzzles to get the parts. There are some very clever puzzles in the game. None of them were really hard but they were hard enough to be satisfying when you completed them. Saying this you will get stuck, sometimes I managed to work my way out of it but over times I had to consult videos on the internet or the discussions board. Luckily there are plenty of walkthroughs for the game.
The loading times between destinations are fast and on most of the chapters you can jump to locations quickly by using maps in your inventory. On some adventure games of this genre you have to wait for the character to move from one side of the screen to the other. This game has a great mechanic where you can jump straight to a place by double clicking the entrance or side of the screen (whenever the arrow icon appears). This prevents you waiting for the character to plod across the screen. Something that I find annoying.
Pressing the space bar on the keyboard reveals all points of interest. This comes in very handy when you are stuck but I found that it’s quicker to use this as soon as you arrive in a new destination. Be warned though that sometimes the environments are larger than one screen so you may have to move left or right to reveal new points of interest.
It is handy to have a pen and paper to jot down names, password combinations, telephone numbers etc.… Most of the time these pieces of information are available in documents in your inventory but at times I did find a pen and paper useful.

Story:
I enjoyed the story very much. It wasn’t anything particularly new but it had moments of suspense, danger, intrigue and humour. I won’t reveal too much as that is the whole purpose of the game. You will find the game very humourous though. The dialogues are the best thing about the game. They will make you smile throughout and on a few occasions I laughed out loud. Quite often they are sarcastic or just very clever observational comedy. You’ll recognize some digs or references to films and TV which were nice. The comedy reminded me of The Monkey Island games yet the humour was more adult themed if that makes sense. Each character had his own personality and there wasn’t one character that I didn’t like. The main characters were very likeable and believable in their roles.

Sound: 🎵
The first thing that struck me about this game was the quality of the voice acting. It really is superb. Each character has a distinct voice and you can tell the game company spent a lot of time developing the characters and hiring different actors for each character.
There isn’t much music or sound FX in the game really but it does have its moments when suspense or danger is about. I think because the game is mainly a comedy that constant music is not needed. When the music is prudent it enhances the game and the lack of music does not detract from the story.

Graphics: 📺
The graphics are beautiful and very distinct. They have a cartoon feel to them but they are nicely shaded and detailed. Even the character’s mouths move when they are speaking which adds to the realism. Even though you know it’s a cartoon the characters are so well developed that they don’t feel like cartoon characters. The graphics are so nicely drawn that they really add to the character’s personalities. The backgrounds and scenery is also very nicely done and there is a lot of attention to detail.

If you are a fan of point and click adventure games then this is a good example of the genre. The story may not be the most original or exciting ride you will have in an adventure game of this ilk, but the strong characters and humourous dialogue will keep you smiling and entertained throughout.

Pros: 👍
Great characters and humourous dialogues
Beautiful hand drawn graphics
Voice acting is superb
Can save the game at any time
Lots of fast movement via double clicks of mouse or by map destinations
Pressing space bar reveals points of interest
Logical and rewarding puzzles

Cons: 👎
If I was being picky then the lack of music but it doesn’t really distract from the story.