Tales Of The Neon Sea is an indie title that I have had my eye on for some time, mainly because of the backdrops I have seen on screenshots before diving in. Before playing something I tend to scan across some stills of the game or have a look at gameplay snippets. What I didn’t know about the game is that it has been available on Windows PC for four years and has only just made its way to consoles. I’m a sucker for pixel-art style titles and I am glad this one has leapt across as it instantly clicked with me even though it is puzzle heavy, I enjoyed every second of this adventure. Developed by YiTi Games and published by Thermite Games and priced at £16.74 on the Xbox family of consoles, is this Cyberpunk-inspired journey worthy of your time?

Gameplay

What I liked about Tales Of The Neon Sea is how laid back the gameplay is and how I could just relax and take my time with things. You’ll traverse the city investigating, conversing with NPCs, solving several puzzles and discovering plenty of hidden easter eggs. The control scheme is simplistic with even the most casual of players able to get to grips with this one. A lot of the game is spent bundling clues and items together to resolve a situation to move on through the chapters. It almost has a feel of Resident Evil in this respect where you’ll retrieve an item to fix up another and you have to ensure that what you’re doing matches the command. So you couldn’t fix a broken cable with just a screwdriver for instance, you’d have to go off and find the thing needed to resolve it.

Personally, I enjoyed how the puzzles of the world knitted together. For the most part, they are simplistic and don’t take too much brainpower to get your head around, but some do have you scratching the scalp. If you’re not into puzzlers whatsoever then I’d imagine this won’t be for you since there are tons of puzzles to get through. Lots of the work is done with Rex and also his feline friend, a cat named William. You’ll be using your four-legged friend to indulge in puzzles going through vents, tackling rats and diving through holes.

Graphics & Audio

I immediately loved the pixel art style in Tales Of The Neon Sea and you can tell none of this has been rushed. Every portion of the game that you traverse through is fantastically illustrated in detail. I was mesmerized by how beautiful the lighting and neon colours popped across the whole screen that I spent probably more time obsessing over the game’s visuals than actually playing at times. I especially loved the character design and personality of Rex and through the on-screen dialogue and narrative, you get a real feel of him as a person. Often I get bored in some games where there are lines and lines of text to read with no voice acting, but here it felt different. The way the text scrolled across in a crisp and clear fashion just blends excellently with the rest of the graphics.

The audio is very minimal but the sound effects and background music are solid enough and present no issues. Throughout the game, I encountered no bugs whatsoever and it was a silky smooth time all around.

In Conclusion

Tales Of The Neon Sea is a stunning indie title and one of the most beautiful I’ve ever played when it comes to its artistic design. It’s a compelling adventure which will consume perhaps 12-20 hours of your time depending on your pacing, although I had seen everything around the 15-hour mark. The mass of puzzles may be an instant turn-off for some and it becomes especially heavy with these around the chapter 2 and 3 mark.

I enjoyed that the game had a “Broken Sword” aura to it as well. What I mean by that is not every solution to every problem stands out and you have to backtrack a little and dig around for clues on how to proceed next. For a game that started out as a Kickstarter concept some years ago now, it has blossomed into an excellent little gem that is worth a look if you love puzzlers.