A funny point & click adventure game with a rare style.

The game self-identifies as a "Steampunk Adventure," which is not wrong, but probably not going to be the dominant feel for most players. The game's atmosphere is mostly formed by an odd mix of antiquated political agendas (you don't hear much about anarchist groups plotting to overthrow emperors anymore); a fun, eastern European geopolitical outlook (All of Canada, the US, and a bit of Mexico are equated with "Texas," for example); and game areas defined by zoomorphs of historical peoples/figures. The whole thing is set to a soundtrack of well-fitting classical music, which you're free to cycle through by collecting records as you go.

Puzzles err logical, with one rare element. The game features an in-game hint system in the form of a friend you can call on your coal-powered cell phone (really). Most fans of point & click adventure games have spent years being trained to avoid ever using in-game hint systems, going so far as to ignore them in favor of walkthroughs. Here though, several puzzles outright REQUIRE you to call your hint system friend before any progress can be made. This makes sense in the context of the game, but may feel unnatural or frustrating to some who are used to the typical conventions.

The game features a smattering of mandatory action-based minigames. They're typically pretty easy, fun, and some can be made even easier through optional puzzles. But extreme purists may still be put off by that sort of thing.

All in all, this is a substantial, fun, and funny point & click adventure game with a brand new feel. Definitely recommended!

The biggest selling point of this game is the humor and various Easter eggs. One might argue that the game is primarily targeting players from ex-Yugoslavia/Austria-Hungary since majority of familiar characters, places and events inspired by historical events are from that region, but it successfully tackles poking fun at historical and geographical stereotypes from around the globe. There's also a few logical puzzles to solve and visually the game is nice and fun to look at. I would describe it as reading and being immersed in a historical picture book for grownups. The game starts nice and slow, easing you in with its storytelling so by the time you get to the last few scenes, they feel a bit too short. Overall fun game, had a lot of laughs.

Political satire cannot become obsolete. Just as tyranny itself shall never be eradicated for as long as humanity still draws breath, social commentary on the “lesser evils” and alternatives to it, will remain a contemporary topic. “Viktor, a Steampunk Adventure”, henceforth mentioned by yours truly as simply Viktor, is the Steam debut of Studio Spektar. The game is nearly one year old but its popularity is unsurprisingly minimal. Most 2D adventure titles seem to fly under the radar on Steam for some reason that doesn’t become apparent until you realize that black humor and politics would never appeal to “weeaboos looking after waifus”. Drop those visual novels and Sakura games for a bit and hear me out, will you? Diversity is the keyword by which all Steam collectors must live by.

Our protagonist is Viktor the Wild Boar, a hapless citizen of the mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire within an alternate history in which World War One never happened and humans as replaced by anthropomorphic animals. Yes, humanlike along with all the racial and national stereotypes you can think of. I never said that this title is aimed at the faint of heart, children or “millennial snowflakes”, oh so easily offended by anything and everyone in our wonderful day and age! If you can take a joke and move along with it, then you’ll enjoy Viktor’s absurd quest of overthrowing the Emperor of Austria-Hungary and claiming the throne for himself. Imperialism is a favorite topic of mine and any games that make fun of its outdated policies, are a welcome break from the well established norms of grand strategy.

“Viktor, a Steampunk Adventure” is obviously featuring a firmly planted tongue in cheek to more than just superficial delusions of grandeur. The temperamental hero of this tale, is a former streetsweeper who got fired even from this minimum wage/responsibility job which didn’t offer him a positive outlook to begin with. Rampant poverty is constantly shown in contrast to the ridiculous opulence of a crumbling empire in which there is no middle class. Viktor’s story has its own flavor of plot twists and a wacky supporting cast, but don’t let the humorous “wrapping” distract you from what’s truly on inside of this package. Social commentary is at its finest when it’s subtle. The “in your face” alternative approach is an amateur’s work at best, yet Studio Spektar have skillfully avoided the pitfalls of acidic satire.

Again, no information was extracted in regards to the game’s graphics engine. It might be Unity or not. It ran smoothly and it scaled perfectly to my monitor’s native resolution yet I still have a couple of complaints about Viktor. How come the 4:3 aspect ratio is still a thing in 2018? And no, don’t even get me started on smartphone clips that promise “higher resolution” while neglecting the ubiquitous 16:9 format. We’re talking about Steam video games now, so 4:3 is a relic belonging to the same technological dust bin as cathode ray tube monitors. You’re not still using those, are you Spektar? Masking the weird aspect ratio through a frame or overlay of sorts is like trying to hide a corpse under the living room carpet. Scaling to 4K resolution seems like an empty victory when I’m still enjoying those nicely drawn backgrounds just in the small oval that’s placed center screen. If you think that by pressing F10 you went into fullscreen mode, boy do I have news for you!

Even the gibberish featured in the Sims series makes more sense than the growls and mumbling from “Viktor, a Steampunk Adventure”. The narrator’s few occasions to shine in the spotlight, are decently voiced but no characters, not even the titular hero, seem to have mastered the art of speech. Satire under written form it is then! I actually did a bit of online digging and I sadly stumbled across the failed funding campaigns that Studio Spektar attemped on both Kickstarter and Indiegogo. They didn’t even have absurd pretentions and I like to think that full voice acting would have been featured in-game, if Viktor would have gained the necessary sponsors. As things stand now, we’ll never know for certain. The title’s saving grace is the soundtrack which features most instrumental genres from jazz to classics such as Dvořák or Mozart. Public domain assets to the rescue! Hope you’ll enjoy the clip below. It fits Viktor’s themes like a…soiled glove.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKO-ebWS4Ko
What would the adventure genre be without puzzles and mini game sections? Certainly not the aforementioned genre. Sorry, I’m out of lame puns for now. Just relax, carefully examine the surroundings and then obsessively click on everything shown on-screen until you’ve solved something. Or not. This isn’t a Hidden Object Game afterall. The HOG is quite literal here. You’re playing as one and very few similar games amused me as much as offering the option to stomp things to the ground, not just interact with them in the same old boring manner of examine, talk or pick up. Those are overrated anyways. Viktor likes to smash things up, even if they don’t belong to him. If violence is not the answer, you’re asking the wrong questions? No, bad hog, very bad hog! Apologize now and keep on stomping your way to the Throne Room. You don’t want me to spoil the game for you, right? Off with you now, there’s quite a road ahead, from that rundown apartment and all the way to wherever your ambitions may take you.

Viktor gets a few things right for all the wrong reasons. It doesn’t look as good as its competition and it certainly doesn’t sound any better. What it managed to accomplish however is the art of black comedy without any literal death within its narrative threads. Consider it the demise of one’s dreams and aspirations instead. Of aiming too high, obviously failing but still never admitting defeat. It takes both brass balls and a sharp wit, to overcome such odds in a favorable manner for an otherwise unlucky hero. A Greek tragedy this is not and I’m certain that you’ll enjoy this particular Steampunk Adventure as well once you overlook several of its flaws.

+ Excellent soundtrack.
+ Steam Achievements.
+ Humor in all its unapologetic glory!
+ Decently sized and unpredictable story.

- Weird aspect ratio even in “fullscreen mode.”
- No Steam Trading Cards.
- Limited voice acting.

Rating 65/100

This review was submitted for Gaming Until End, through the generous contribution of HellCow and the Steam Curator Connect program.

Viktor, a Steampunk Adventure is an old-fashion point & click adventure game which tells the story of Viktor, a grumpy but ambitious wild boar's quest of becoming the new emperor of Austria-Hungary in a semi-realistic steampunk world.

The hand-drawn cartoonish artstyle and the tastefullly chosen classical background music create a delightful world for immersion, which I really appreciate. There're lots of interesting characters for you to meet and interact with, making your journey more dramatic and also more memorable. Generally it's a well-made game but I'm not going to elaborate the good aspects of it too much in this review, instead, I would like to point out something that really bothered me during the experience.

First of all, I wouldn't say I had "the biggest fun" playing the game as the devs stated in their release announcement. Don't get me wrong, it IS a fun game for most of the part, but I also found it frustrating as hell sometimes. In my opinion, the flow of the game is seriously impeded by its quirky nature, in other words, the game requires you to trial and error or take wild guesses instead of making logical reasonings and speculations to find the only correct solution to certain situations from time to time. As a result, I often ended up trying all the possible interactions in a scene despite I firmly believed that I already known what should be done to make progress. However, having the right direction in your mind is not enough, sometimes you'll need to follow a specific order of actions to trigger the desire outcome. The solution only make sense after you know it, and the thought process is not properly guided due to the lack of fundamental cues. A game can be challenging, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it should be frustrating. Although there is kind of a "hint system" in the game, it's not accessible all the time and not quite informative, I mean, how helpful do you expect a hookah-obsessed owl to be? I don't think it's me being dumb at the game as I have played a fair amount of point & click adventure games to make this comment. Well, enough for this crap, let's move on.

What annoyed me as much as the issue above is the "voice acting" of the game. You should know that this is one of those games in which the characters talk gibberish instead of any distinguishable human language (you may catch a few words that can be understood, for example, I recognized some Japanese words from a "Nippleon" bunny). Although I'm extremely particular about voice both in games and real life, normally I'm okay with this kind of voice acting and I know it's there to add to the vibe of black comedy, but I just can't take it for hours! I think it's more suitable for a game featuring an image-based narration style and has minimal dialogues (similar to silent films). In this case, however, the game is filled with dialogues so you're forced to listen to those "noises" constantly throughout the game. I found it to be kinda obnoxious after a certain point and I had to turn down the volume a couple notches so I won't get a headache. Another downside of this is that you have to look at the subtitles whenever there's a dialogue going on, so you'll have less energy left to pay attention to the actual environment of the game. Maybe it's just me, but I think the game will be much more enjoyable if there were some actual voice acting involved (just like the narration in the intro cutscene).

The last thing I have on my mind is not a complaint but just some thoughts about the "humor" in the game. As a black comedy as it is, the game is filled with geographical, political, and historical jokes, mostly in a straightforward, stereotypical manner, which are probably intentional and not meant to be offensive. I'm not very sensitive when it comes to these types of jokes but I don't care for them that much as well, so most of the time I just read them with a deadpan. As the story completely takes place in Europe (steampunk Europe, if you will), most of these jokes/puns are more effective on certain demographic groups than an outsider like me.

I know basically I've been ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on the game most of this review, but overall, it's a neat game which I did have fun playing, and I'm not hesitant about recommending it to those who have a thing for point & click adventure games.

I didn't like this game.
Viktor, a Steampunk Adventure 2/10
Heisen

Viktor, a Steampunk Adventure is an adventure game with a steampunk feel featuring Viktor. Bet you didn’t see that twist coming. Now onto the mundane stuff: Viktor is a grumpy wild boar road sweeper who loses his job in the opening seconds of the game. Rather than shuffle off to the job centre to seek new employment, he decides the best way to fix his circumstances is to oust the ruler of Austria-Hungary.

Perhaps he sees it as the next logical step on his career path, which makes at least as much sense as the rest of the game. Viktor is a surreal swirling of tongue-in-cheek political satire, anamorphic history rebinding and adventure game logic, written by someone who I imagine spent a lot of time binge watching Monty Python with his eyes propped open by matchsticks. It wears its nonsensical inspirations on its sleeves, sprouting literal gibberish (spoken lines are just accented mumblings that play over the top of your text options, as seems to be the styling of the times) and asking you to advance via buffoonery.

That’s not uncommon in the point 'n click genre, where the ludicrous actions you have to undertake are commonly hidden behind a strong veneer of snark, but it feels especially appropriate here. Viktor’s cartoon aesthetics mesh well with the outlandish cast (who sometimes take on well known personas such as Dr. Frankenstein and Nikola Tesla) and the oft-eccentric actions you’ll need to undertake. Some of this is traditional item-based puzzle solving, where you use whatever crap you find lying around Viktor’s world to mash together peculiar solutions to peculiar situations, but just as much is dialogue-based. Branching conversations options allow you to try bluffing or threatening your way through some puzzles.

Full Review // http://www.honestgamers.com/13364/pc/viktor-a-steampunk-adventure/review.html

Simple looking game, but it will make you laugh out loud. Even exiting game will make you smile. Humour is weapon of choice of this game. You will also encounter a lot of geeky puns, colourful characters, messy style of art, interesting mini games... Politicaly correct? No. In this game you can laugh at yourself equaly as at others. Hint: learn more about ex Austria Hungary Empire and it will be even more funny!

What was it like, to live in Austria-Hungary in the late 19th century? The country clearly had some serious problems. The poor worked 9 hours a day only to earn their rent and dug through all drawers and pockets (not necessarily their own) to find a few coins to afford a third-class dirigible ticket. It's hard not to identify with Viktor who has just lost his job. "Stupid trash can, stupid grandfather clock, stupid world!", laments Viktor. And we know exactly how he feels! The emperor, locked in his luxurious palace, held the country in his iron fist or, more precisely, in iron fists of his automaton minions. Little did he care about the misery of his subjects. On the other hand, science and technology marched forward, bringing hope for a better future and cheap coal-powered cellphones to the masses.

Viktor, a Steampunk Adventure is an outstanding point and click adventure with great humor, unique art style, and a polished and immersive setting that perfectly fits the story.

The game doesn't insult the player with hand-holding (there's a "hint system", but it's just another part of the fun). In fact, the difficulty of some puzzles approaches that of classic point-and-click games, although every puzzle is perfectly solvable with a bit of thinking and experimenting. They are just hard enough to be fun to solve.

The dialogues and the interactions with the environment are well-thought-out and often hilarious. Drunk philosophy, sarcasm, clever insults, poop jokes, surreal humor, everything is smart and funny and often extremely politically incorrect! What's not to love about this mushroom-induced trip to Austria-Hungary nice and pleasant game!

pros

✅ cartoony, colorful and cute hand drawn background artwork and character models
✅ humorous story about a street sweeper fired from his job and decided to oust the emperor and become the new ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. On his quest, he will engage in all sorts of adventures, like an airship fight and meeting the love of his life in an anarchist basement.
✅ there are some nice variety puzzles and mini games
✅ charming, likeable, goofy and quirky main and side characters
✅ soundtrack consist of classical music masterpieces
✅ there are steam achievements and cards
✅ there are in game collectibles
✅ decent length

cons

❌ just expect full of adventure game logic puzzle solutions and frustrating mini games
❌ steam achievements doesn't make too much sense
❌there are too many dialogues in this game, but characters are talking only gibberish, and there are no voiceovers
❌slow character animations
❌game feels really low budget and very indie

Overall, this is a decent indie point-and-click game that reminds me of old LucasArts point-and-click adventure games from the 1990s.

I had lots of fun playing Viktor: a steampunk adventure. In the first playthrough I got stuck near the end on a mini game and couldn't progress forward, so I had to start all over. In my second playthrough I finished it in 1 day. The game is set on planet Earth but in a parallel timeline, a steam-punk world in which the geo-political situation is different then the one we are experiencing in this timeline. The story is captivating, for me it was exiting to embark on a quest to overthrow the emperor. The charachters are funny, the dialogues are filled with humor. The graphics are detailed and well drawn. In regards of difficulty, it's not too difficult but also not easy, so especially in some parts of the game you will have to give your best to try out every possible solution. The game has a lot of mini-games in it. Some of the mini-games are very fun and some were not implemented well, so there is a risk for some of them to become annoying. The main strenghts of the game are in my opinion the sense of humor in it, the pictoresque graphics and the storyline. I wish it was longer though. When I began the game I had the feeling that the main charachter will travel to more places and have more options. For example I thought perhaps at some point there will be some strategic elements involved (how cool would it be if Viktor commanded a rebel army and go to battle against the Emperor's army in a mini-game?). So the first half of the game was better then the second half IMO. But generally this is a very good game that is worth it's price.