American Arcadia (2023)

Wow this game is absolutely nuts. From the developers of Call of The Sea (which I only just heard of and finished), this team of ex-industry indie devs have crafted a seriously impressive sophomore effort. It’s unbelievably polished with Pixar-level animation, but the gameplay and story are just as impressive.

You follow Trevor, a 28-year old man who is just learning that his life is a lie. In a Truman Show meets 1984 twist, you alternate between trying to escape this live televised dystopia, while also playing as the hacker insider that is helping him do so.

The gameplay is absolutely fantastic… and equally hard to categorize. While often times you are playing a 2.5d puzzle platformer as Trevor, you also play through many sections in first person as Angela the hacker. These sections go from hacking, stealth, puzzles, exploration, etc. But it’s all just so well made and has that AAA polish.

But it has indie heart as well. The story is an absolute thrill ride, with tons of twists and turns. The locations are always changing, and often have impressive set pieces and tons of optional lore to discover. It’s just one of the most impressive indie games I’ve ever played.

I don’t know what size team the Spain-based studio Out of the Blue actually has, but the fact that this game released a mere 3 years after Call of the Sea is hard to fathom. It’s funny, captivating, filled with heart, and really hard to put down. One of the better games I’ve played in a while - and it’s not even the type of game I normally go for. If my dark horror-biased brain can enjoy it, then it’s an easy recommendation for just about everyone.

I had a good amount of fun with this one! American Arcadia takes the classic Truman Show premise, and asks what it would look like if the fictional city of Arcadia was part unaware residents, part actors, and part corporate enforcers that act to prevent people from escaping.

American Arcadia carries a great dry sense of humor, and a certain corporate cynicism that feels horribly rooted in reality. There's plenty of sections that wonderfully satirize parts of the real world, like Disney or live streaming sites like Twitch cleverly, and it never failed to bring a smile to my face when it happened.

The gameplay is largely very simple, and most puzzles are fairly simple too. I see many reviews calling the game a walking simulator, and they're not totally wrong, but in my opinion AA gets the formula right way more than other games do. There's a brilliant section in the game where you're controlling the protagonist in a stealth section while being distracted by an interrogation. Sections like these have some tension but also help drive home the point that things in AA are silly and absurd too.

The artstyle and environments are really noteworthy in this game - I grew to appreciate how well the game made different environments work. It's easy to forget how natural the environments feel when most levels are just left and right - look at the great backdrops as you play! I also enjoy the stylized color palettes and models of the game, everything generally looks great. The voice acting also carries a ton of the game, as all of the performances here are just terrific. Soundtrack and effects are also great - Don't Be A Fool is unironically such a fun track.

On the critical side, there are a few puzzles I found to be a little frustrating. There generally aren't extra hints if you get stuck, but I did eventually get my way through most of them without much trouble.

American Arcadia doesn't have a ton of replay value, but you can hunt for achievements here and there. A lot of them show off the game's great and often humorous attention for detail - for instance, try ignoring the morning alarm in the second scene of the game. Overall, I can fairly strongly recommend this one! 85/100

There is essentially no gameplay, just hold right, maybe jump every so often. Walking simulator. The story is pretty interesting but the ending was wildly unrewarding. You cannot skip any dialogue or cutscenes so replaying for achievements is a drag, at least there's a handy scene selector.

But yeah, they might as well have made a short film instead of a game. This is barely a game, there is little to no agency for the player and the action sequences are so laughably easy I don't see the point.

Most of the "puzzles" are so easy too you're kinda just sitting there watching the MC move a crate for 10 seconds until you can move on to the next cutscene disguised as "gameplay".

I saw an ad for American Arcadia & saw that is was from the same developers who gave us Call of the Sea, Out of the Blue. That game surprised me by being a Lovecraftian Romance. I tried the demo they offered for AA before release & liked what they were promising. With the Steam Spring Sale, I finally picked up the game.

Whereas Call of the Sea was a pretty traditional walking simulator type game with a nice dash of puzzles mixed in, American Arcadia is a bit more ambitious. The gameplay is split up into two playstyles. The first is closer to Call of the Sea’s, you are in first person mode and interacting with the world to solve logic puzzles. The second and more substantial playstyle is a 2D 3rd person perspective platformer with traversal puzzles and chase scenes. Out of the Blue is much more interested in telling unique stories using video games as a medium vs pushing the mechanics of gaming forward with new or novel ideas. Most of this game plays like a slow Sonic, you just press right on your keyboard.

While most walking sims, like Call of the Sea, are content to have you explore a world empty of other people, American Arcadia is a step forward as there is a whole world of NPCs you interact with. They are all well voice acted, they could even afford Yuri Lowenthal for their main protagonist. The character designs remind me of Going Medieval or a similar tycoon style game, in that they aren’t super detailed and go more for an artsy, low polygon look. It fits the rest of the world design fine and they are still expressive enough. The world is a bright, blocky landscape drenched in the 1970s. The colors and patterns are all pulled from the 70s, as well as most of the character designs. Throughout the world there’s posters and marketing for the main corporation you interact with that are all fun to gawk at.

So, the story, this is the meat’n’potatoes of the game. You play as Trevor Hills, a boring dude with a boring job in the 1970s city of Arcadia, but it turns out you are actually part of a Truman Show type reality television show. When he wins the “travel award” he’s contacted by our other player character, Angela Solano, a feisty Latina nerd, which I’m kinda into… thanks Middleman. She’s a tech working at the media company who runs the Arcadia TV show. She helps Trevor escape by hacking into Arcadia’s computer systems. As you go through the game you learn more about the world and the TV show Trevor has unwittingly been a part of. These are done with clips in a documentary style similar to what Mafia 3 did. Basically, our Walt Disney stand in builds his world of tomorrow for everyone to live in, but after his death in the 60s, the “Disney” corporation turned it into a TV show where the civilians weren’t aware they were in a forced time capsule for the greater world’s enjoyment. While Walt Disney has his skeletons in a closet, it was nice to see his stand in here shown as a genuinely nice person and not the typical smiling megalomaniac.

The city can be visited by tourists and some of the civilians are paid actors who are in on the secret, but they both have to promise not to break the 4th wall. If you think too hard on the premise, it is unlikely a show like this would've lasted 40+ years without the secret getting out. And the fact that it's still the 70s is a bit dubious, even with the media company controlling everything, cultural tastes naturally change. But, this world never felt too stupid to be successful, so a lot of these discrepancies can be hand waived off.

The main plot is Trevor escaping the city, which worried me that we’d only get a small taste of the retro-futuristic city before being stuck in industrial hallways or woods. Luckily, his escape doesn’t go smoothly, so we get to spend plenty of time in Arcadia. On Angela’s side we get to explore an alternate version of 2023 where science and corporate power has advanced beyond our own world, for better or, mostly, for worse. She sneaks around the media company’s offices to help Trevor. As Angela & Trevor help each other they start to become friends and at the end of the game they start a relationship, which I felt was earned.

You come across an eclectic group of characters through this adventure. Through the archival footage you learn about Elijah Walton (our Walt Disney) & Dr. Kovacs, a sort of 70s Bill Nye the Science Guy. In the current adventure, you are constantly hounded by Angela’s boss Kenda, who doesn’t get any real characterization, outside of “bitchy manager”. Trevor’s boss is seen briefly and is an Office Spaced reference, I’m sure. The new leader of Walton Media is Elijah’s granddaughter Vivian who sends the chief of security after Trevor. He’s a fun character with a twist at the end I won’t spoil.

In the end, so spoiler time, skip to the “All in all” to avoid them, it turns out Trevor’s escape was secretly staged by Vivian as a new show to boost Arcadia’s ratings. The game starts off as a pretty standard Truman Show type plot, but in the end it delves into themes of people’s worth to the greater collective, Trevor was a boring man with a life no one gave 2 shits about, that’s why he had to be removed from the show/Arcadia. When his escape attempt becomes public, he becomes the most popular person in Arcadia. During the final chapter you can see the live chat of Trevor’s feed and the comments are pretty accurate to the comments found on a YouTube video. People cheer for him when he’s running for his life and dodging the law, but when he stops to protest his treatment and the unlawfulness of Arcadia the comments are people complaining he’s boring and to stop preaching and start running. The game is very much commenting on how people consume escapist media mindlessly & feel those monkeys on our screen owe us constant entertainment. The game doesn’t hit this message too hard and it’s not a hot take, but I think it was a good conclusion to this story.

One thing that undercuts the game’s deeper message is the tone. The game starts out pretty straight with the comedy coming from the absurdism of everything, but by the last few chapters the game seems to lean into the comedy more. It’s never jarring and I did laugh at most of the jokes, the final speech from Trevor had me laughing out loud for a solid couple minutes. The increase of comedy makes their big message feel less preachy, but undermines it’s impact too much.

All in all, I really enjoyed this game, it’s only a few hours long. If you like fun narratives and distinct art styles this is a must buy, even at the sticker price. Trevor and Angela both are great characters that are fun to spend time with. The gameplay and puzzles are just engaging enough to never feel stale. Out of the Blue is 2 for 2 with me with their games, so I’ll be interested to see what comes out next.

While this may not be the best demonstration of the strengths of the video game medium, it more than makes up for its lackluster gameplay with exceptional art direction and writing. The art style is kind of Pixar meets Wes Anderson with highly polished and pascal colored low detailed polygons. It's an endearing art style that will age well down the road. I don't really want to spoil the plot too much, because it's best experienced blind, but it ends up being a biting satire of capitalism with the satire using the Disney Corporation as the focus of its ire and woes. The ending is where this game truly shines and elevates itself. It's one of the most satisfying endings to a video game I've had the pleasure to experience in a long time. And the game doesn't pad out it's run time. It's short, sweet and to the point. The main protagonists are charming and a joy to get to know throughout the journey. Again, there's plenty I would like to nerd out about but I don't want to spoil the story, especially given that was the main pull for me.

Gameplay is a combination between 2D sidescrolling, with light puzzle elements, and first person puzzle solving. Most of the game you will be holding the joystick in the right direction with the occasional jump prompt. It's honestly not that engaging and certainly lackluster. I also found some of the first person puzzles to get a little frustrating. This simple gameplay loop does have a few fleeting moments of brilliance. Particularly in the climax of the film where they transform the voyeuristic perspective into something clever and satirical with it's biting criticism of TwitchTV and it's ilk. There does seem to be an artistic statement with the simple game play. For one thing, Trevor Hills is meant to be a very normal person. Not some parkour super Chad. So the simplicity of the gameplay does double as character development. Still, there are moments where the gameplay shines through, there's just not enough of it. For example, there's a moment where you need to navigate Trevor past guards while your friend is being interrogated by a security officer. Neither gameplay loop is challenging, but the layering of both mechanics simultaneously is both immersive and elevates the tension. There are a few more moments like this, but again not enough to keep the game play that engaging. What kept me progressing was the next story beat.

This isn't a long game, but I did end up beating it in only a few days. I prefer a shorter game without padding, particularly when it tells a griping story. It really sucked me in. So while this won't blow you away in terms of gameplay, it is an exceptionally well told and clever story that I highly recommend!