Trevor Philips is a 28-year-old account manager with no friends and a boring life that nobody cares about. What Trevor doesn’t know is that he is one of twenty-three thousand four hundred and fourteen citizens whose activity is being broadcast 24 hours a day on American Arcadia, the most watched television program on the planet. Nothing would make him suspect that his existence of luxury and comfort is a fraud if it weren’t for an unexpected message: “If you don’t leave the city right now, you will die.”
This is the starting point of the new game from the Madrid studio Out of the Blue Games, a fast-paced narrative adventure that at no time hides its inspiration from the already classic film The Truman Show (Peter Weir, 1998). Here too, a large dome protects and isolates from the outside a metropolis that has been suspended in time, anchored in a colorful and joyful vision of the seventies.
The team behind the acclaimed Call of the Sea (2020) returns with a game that keeps the focus on puzzle solving, but ups the ante and adds more elements to the formula. American Arcadia combines 2D perspective platforming and puzzle sections with other first-person gameplay moments that prioritize exploration and device-hacking dynamics. They are two experiences in one that combine and alternate in a way that is as natural as it is surprising, always linked to a story that – although excessively linear for being a video game – never loses interest, has a very well written script and a narrative pulse with that nerve capable of keeping you glued to the computer screen.
Throughout the eight hours it may take you to complete the adventure, the quality of the performances by a cast of actors who know how to give a lot of personality to characters that, although aesthetically minimalist, achieve convey many emotions. The same can be said of the excellent art design, a job in which the retro-futuristic city that gives the game its name stands out and that offers images of great visual beauty.
