The review was originally published on Indie Game Picks [indiegamepicks.wordpress.com].

The ghost of the famous Oscar Wilde collaborates with an assertive woman in a side-scrolling Point and Click Adventure full of intrigue, which is based on and looks like a comic!

The subject of this review comes to Steam about six years after Wailing Heights, the debut release by Outsider Games. Jennifer Wilde: Unlikely Revolutionaries had a Kickstarter campaign at the end of 2017. It was funded, but didn't succeed in reaching the stretch goals that would allow the studio to add voice acting, text in languages other than English and develop console versions of the game.

Jennifer Wilde: Unlikely Revolutionaries is based on the first issue of the comic book series Jennifer Wilde, created by Robert Curley and Maura McHugh, drawn by Stephen Downey, co-founder of Outsider Games, and published by the Irish company Atomic Diner. Maura McHugh and Stephen Downey worked on the development of the game as well.

Jennifer Wilde: Unlikely Revolutionaries shares a similar comic book art style with Wailing Heights, but the obvious difference is that the graphics during gameplay and in the cutscenes are in black and white, staying faithful to the origin of the game. The characters are elegantly designed, the backgrounds look beautiful, detailed and atmospheric. The arrangement of objects and people on layers creates a sense of perspective. The dialogue choices, which drive the story, appear in speech bubbles.

1921. The beginning of the game finds us in a small apartment in Paris playing as Jennifer Chevalier, a young artist embracing a rather boem lifestyle. Jean Chevalier, her father, a man who served as a doctor during the recent war saving lives, pays her a surprise visit after a long time. They arrange to have lunch at the trendy Maxim's restaurant the next day.

The lunch never happens though, because Jean Chevalier gets killed by a car on his way to Maxim's. Jennifer is not convinced at all that this was a terrible accident, as the police believes, and she starts searching for clues to prove otherwise.

She finds an unexpected ally very soon in the face of the long deceased Oscar Wilde, who had met her father decades ago. Jennifer is the only human being, who is able to see and talk to the ghost. The two of them exchange thoughts about the facts related to the case, the past and the present of the society, the worlds of the living and the dead. References on the famous writer's plays are there and Oscar Wilde doesn't lose opportunities to express his sophisticated and revolutionary back in his era points of view about life, human behaviour, prejudices and art!

The young woman and the ghost travel from France to London and then to Dublin -locations with great significance in Oscar Wilde's life!- dealing with friendly, secretive or dangerous people and spirits. Their investigation leads them to reveal the secret past of Jennifer's father at the end.

We control both the characters. Switching from Jennifer to the ghost of Oscar Wilde and vice versa in order to use their special abilities is easy and necessary. Our immaterial friend bypasses obstacles, passes unnoticed by the living and interacts with lighting sources. He can't carry objects though!

As I wrote before, Jennifer is an artist and she sketches illustrated notes as the developers call them. She keeps her drawings, clippings, letters and small objects in her notebook. This is the inventory! By clicking on the sketches, we get helpful hints about them.

I kept for last the key gameplay mechanic that differs Jennifer Wilde: Unlikely Revolutionaries from the majority of games of the genre. Putting the drawings in the right order and sometimes combining them are among the ways to solve puzzles and push forward the interrogation of the NPCs. In the pages of the book, we also find the maps we need to fast travel from one place to another and the list of our quests.

Jennifer Wilde: Unlikely Revolutionaries is an eye candy, but it offers more than beautiful visuals! For about four hours, I was smitten by the plot and its interesting gameplay.