Primordia is a point and click adventure game developed by Wormwood Studios and published by Wadjet Eye Games. The game was released on PC in 2012 and received an iOS port in 2016. Point and click adventures really thinned out after roughly the year 2000, but came back quite strongly after a combination of mobile touch screen controls on Nintendo's DS helped developers reach a massive audience, and the rise of digital distribution on PC. The sparse and largely silent scene on PC started to revitalize with modern design sensibilities. The growth of Steam also helped with visibility as many stores were significantly downsizing their physical shelf space for PC games. Digital storefronts are largely immune from this problem.
Primordia is a post-apocalyptic game. But, it goes a bit further than most others and has gone post-human. After the extinction of mankind only robots walk the earth. Players control a humanoid robot named Horatio Nullbuilt and his hand built sidekick Crispin Horatiobuilt. The robots have a patronymic naming system, being given a first name by those who build them, and their last name tells the world who built them. Horatio has some amnesia, he's the fifth version of himself and cannot remember his previous versions. His internal data corruption has affected his name, so it remains partially undefined.
On the surface
Primordia is a regular and normal point and click adventure. You click to move and pick up items, talk to characters, and solve puzzles. There is also some typing that is done in an information kiosk. Thankfully,
Primordia is quite modern in terms of its puzzle design. Many puzzles can be completed in various different ways and with different items. On top of that, important information is saved in Horatio's datapad, and can be accessed at any time. One other great aspect of
Primordia is the way the story is designed. How you solve puzzles and solve other robot's problems influences the game's endings. There is no possible way for a player to lock themselves out of beating the game, it is not of the ilk of the real old school point and clicks where a missed item can completely block players from beating the game. There are an insane amount of endings, but most are simply variations of a few main endings.
Primordia is published by Wadjet Eye who is known for featuring beautiful 2D pixel art graphics.
Primordia is no different, and its imaginative setting and design really helps the game's look stand out. The music and sound effects in the game are quite atmospheric, giving the world a hopeless feeling as it stumbles to its death bed. The audio is built around industrial sounds. Everything sounds like its being made by a machine, and most of the sound really is. From the ambient humming of large power supplies to the grinding of gears, the sound design really makes it feel like there are no people left.
Primordia is a short game that has an intriguing world. However, the characters are quite predictable. Any fan of point and click adventures has played more than one game with a straight faced, no nonsense main character in Horatio, and his humorous and more relaxed sidekick in Crispin. The game can easily be beaten in around 5 hours. Getting the full experience will likely require multiple playthroughs as some characters and events can be screwed up and missed. The fact that players can also beat the game no matter what their decisions are also helps the game in terms of how easy it is to approach. Sometimes you just want to go on an adventure and not end up locked out of the ending because of a missed key item or information.
Primordia normally sells for $9.99 on Steam and $4.99 on the App Store. It does go on sale fairly frequently, at least on Steam. If the mobile version is preferred then a tablet will provide a much better, more detailed, and more easily controlled experience.
