Port of Call – when completing this game, certainly is a fitting title. Also please do not get this mixed up with the naval / simulation game Ports of Call (note the plural ‘Ports’). This game is totally free in Steam that tells the story of you, being on a ferry boat, not knowing how you got there in the first place. Plays upon the narrative / walking simulator theme however it’s a little more than simply looking at the scene and moving on to the next. The backdrop story, whilst not original however still interesting enough to play through until the end.
The game’s visuals all renders in cell shading and nicely done. However there are times where the frame rate drops all of a sudden when more items suddenly appear on the screen. However, because the game’s pace, this does not deter the gameplay at all. The controls are extremely simple to learn as it plays along with ‘traditional’ adventure games without inventory management. Furthermore there’s almost no puzzles to solve however, like I have mentioned before, it plays along with telling the story instead of puzzle solving. The musical scores, whilst all short in nature, do produce a meticulous, mournful tone; similar to those ambience scores from the Stalker series.
Without inventory management, this may be the bane of playing any adventure games however due to its short length (about 30 mins) and being free, you really cannot argue about this. Normally I will dismiss the idea of amnesia stories as, for me, they portray lazy story writing falsely perpetrating the mystery behind the main protagonist, I’m happy to dismiss it this time. Also, the project (game) was part of the finalist at E3 2014 from the team of students from UT Austin’s Game and Mobile Media Applications (GAMMA) program, I hope the team continues on developing more games as I was impressed with this one.