I will say this now, I have a lot of qualms with point-and-click adventure games. It’s a genre I didn’t grow up with and one that I often find painfully slow to play unless executed extremely well. So if this preview seems overly negative, it’s probably because of my own personal preferences. It’s also worth noting that we received a preview build of the game, so some issues will be down to the fact that it’s not finished yet and may be addressed by the full release. Enough disclaimers, let’s dive into it.
The main reason I wanted to play Dance of Death: Du Lac & Fey despite my usual lack of interest in adventure games is because of its unique setting and characters. It’s set in Victorian London, an era I have little knowledge of outside of the odd Doctor Who episode, but one I find intriguing all the same. It’s also set to be a murder mystery adventure, and I adore a good murder mystery (I love the Danganronpa games as an example) but this time, you’re investigating as King Arthur’s loyal knight, Lancelot Du Lac, and his trusty companion, Morgana Le Fey, who has taken the form of a dog rather unwillingly. There is a third character called Mary Jane Kelly, who I’ve never heard of before, but a quick google search did reveal some potential spoilers for the plot, so maybe avoid doing that if you can help it. Oh and of course, with this being Victorian London, you’ll be trying to identify the truth behind Jack the Ripper and their bloody murders. At the same time, you’ll be trying to locate Merlin, as he’s responsible for binding Fey to her current canine form. The blend of historical accuracy and mythological characters is fascinating and was enough to grab my attention on its own.
The preview included a prologue and two chapters to try out, and you get to control all three characters during that time. It works like your typical point-and-click adventure game. Click to walk, click to talk, click to this, click to that. I found that the path-finding was a bit wonky, making the characters appear to be following GPS instructions with their eyes closed to get anywhere, and often if I clicked on the background they’d have no idea where to go and would just head off screen. It doesn’t help that in the larger areas it’s harder to figure out where you can go, and if your character goes behind a foreground object you’re blind as to where they’re going at all. I had some issues where the camera would pan really slowly as well, or face the wrong direction entirely unless I did a three-point turn to force it to re-position itself. Hopefully this will be fine-tuned before the final release, or a second control scheme could be implemented using a controller perhaps.
I wouldn’t mind the walking so much though if it weren’t for the fact that you need to position your character quite precisely to get interactive icons to appear. Talking, moving between areas and picking up objects all require you stand very close-by, which is easier said than done. This also made for the nasty side-effect of heading down long alleyways to discover that there was nothing there, and having to spend a further ten seconds coming all the way back afterwards. I would much prefer if the icons displayed upon mouse proximity to avoid wasting time exploring dead ends. I did massively appreciate that you can at least fast walk by double-clicking though, that helped a lot to speed things up and keep me engaged. Cause funnily enough, the less time spent watching my character walk whilst I do literally nothing, the better.
OK, two paragraphs down on why I hate walking. One more paragraph of complaining, then I’ll focus on what I liked instead. This preview build did have a myriad of different bugs. For one, the chapter select didn’t work. If I loaded chapter one the entire world was grey and it would eventually cut to a close up of a preacher’s historically accurate ugly mug. Fortunately chapter one would load properly provided I sped through the prologue and skipped all the text to get to it first. I also encountered an issue where Mary Kelly could enter Du Lac & Fey’s hotel room, upon which she would never appear and could never exit, forcing me to restart the chapter. The preview was also lacking a simple pause menu and “quit game” option, so I had to Alt+F4 when I was done playing. I’m hopeful that these bugs and omissions aren’t indicative of how the final game will be though.
Now, what did I like? First of all, I love the artwork they’ve made for the backgrounds. They’re very pretty, and the use of 3D models on a pre-rendered background gave me a pang of nostalgia for games such as Digimon World and Final Fantasy IX back on the Playstation 1, but updated to match current graphical standards. The 3D models themselves have a really cohesive style as well, where it’s just cartoonish enough to steer clear of uncanny valley, while not being childish or silly either. Plus, Fey is a dog, and I love dogs, so it’s nice to have her inclusion in the cast. I was slightly disappointed though that some background characters were instead 2D depictions, which I found a little jarring against the 3D models.
On an audio front, the music was vibrant and lively, a welcome surprise to accompany the rather mundane gameplay. But what really stood out was the excellent quality and quantity of voice-acting on show here. If my memory serves me right, every character I spoke to was fully voice-acted and unique in their delivery, and there were some excellent performances. My personal favourite character interaction was between Fey and one of the local dogs (since Fey can speak to animals) which made me laugh out loud. I was really happy to see them again in a later area and even happier to get even more new lines from them. The performances given by the three main characters are superb as well, which is especially important if we’re going to be spending the whole game with them. Du Lac had his rather formal way of speaking, while Fey was much more blunt and sarcastic. But Mary Kelly stole the show for me with her Welsh tone and regular swearing. I really look forward to hearing more from these characters in later chapters.
Last thing I will go into is the “murder mystery” part of the game. There wasn’t too much to go off of in this small offering, but it seemed heavily focused on narrative more than puzzle solving or piecing together clues. Not necessarily a bad thing, I’ve enjoyed games with less gameplay before, but I would like to have more opportunity to head up my own leads and see where the trail takes me. It also bothered me that in the prologue there was no explanation as to how the corpses ended up where they were. They were killed in the church, and yet they’re found lying outside and even all the way down the road, which makes no sense to me anyway. Regardless, I’m eager to continue the case upon full release as there a lot of questions left unanswered by the end of the demo.
Overall, I’m tentatively anticipating Dance of Death: Du Lac & Fey‘s full release. There was a lot in the preview build that didn’t work right, which I’m hopeful will be addressed, and it seemed heavily focused on its characters and setting more than on providing engaging activities for the player to do along the way. I did spend a lot of my playtime with hands off of the keyboard and mouse, which is something I’m never particularly fond of. But, I’m sold on the main trio after this first outing, and enjoyed the glimpse into Victorian London that the game provided even in this early state. I’m confident that once the kinks are ironed out, I’ll have a much better time with it.
A digital preview copy of Dance of Death: Du Lac & Fey was supplied for Steam by the developer.
