Gemini Rue

I had a voracious appetite for point-and-click games when I was a youngster; it’s quite literally all I ever played. I ploughed my way through a mish-mash of stone-cold classics like Monkey Island and Blade Runner, along with some of the more, some would say, “cult” classics like Discworld and Toonstruck. They fell slightly out of fashion for a while, but I’ve always had a soft spot for them. When point-and-click games had a recent-ish (wait, it’s been like 10 plus years) revival, I ended up buying an absolute shedload of them – Gemini Rue being the one I was most excited about. And yet, for some reason, it has taken me until now to actually play it.

The premise of Gemini Rue is genuinely intriguing: a man searching for his brother, who has seemingly been abducted by a shady group and taken to a space station called Center 7 where they wipe your brain, turn you into assassins, then turn you out into society with a brand new identity. You get to experience this story from the viewpoint of two different characters, Azriel, who is searching for his brother, and Delta-Six, a man who has lost his memories aboard the aforementioned Center 7.

Right from the off though, Gemini Rue was already on the back foot with me. The name of the main character, Azriel Odin, is just awful. It sounds like the name you’d get after pressing randomise on a fantasy name generator one too many times. It sounds like the name you pick when you’re 12 years old and need a “cool” online nickname you’ll then be stuck with forevermore. It is just such an out-of-place, odd choice for a name in this game I cannot quite comprehend what the developer was going for, especially when everyone else is called something comparatively quite normal like Matthius or Giselle.

But a single name is not enough to make this a bad game, of course. My absolute major bugbear throughout Gemini Rue is the fucking elevators. My god, why are there so many? Why is the majority of the game spent watching elevator doors open and close? Nothing ever even happens in them; you just watch your character stand there silently as the elevator goes up or down. When you play as Delta-Six, literally every different area requires the use of an elevator. And there is a lot of backtracking, all done via these very same elevators because this is not a big game world.

Now, Gemini Rue is not all bad, but the issue with the elevators, along with some very suspect voice acting, was hard for me to get over. I know this is terrible of me to admit, but by the end of the game, I found myself using a guide, not because the game is difficult, but because I just wanted it to be over.

https://questtozero.com/game-review/gemini-rue-review/

Beautiful Adventure by a Single Developer named Joshua Nuernberger. Tied me up for a really long time and was incredibly Fun. The Story of the Game is set in a sil fiction world and goes towards film noir, The Story is set at the beginning on the Planet Barracus, on which it seems to Rain only and whose Inhabitants are oppressed by a mafia-like Organization called "Boryokudan" Be. Our Main Character Named Azriel Odin Tries to find an Acquaintance to get Information about his Brother, who has disappeared. The second Main Character is Delta Six, which is located in a Rehabilitation Facility and has tried several times to flee from there. He is always caught and his Memory is reset. You explore this Center, do shooting Exercises, meet Various Fellow Prisoners and try to flee, of course. I don't want to reveal any More of the Story, but it's really good. Somehow reminds me of Blade Runner a lot. The Game is fully set, so voiceover and Music. There is also a German Version, but without Voiceover, it is not quite mature and one already gets stuck on the first Search Terminal, because the Name of the Skyscraper was misused. One looks for the "Hibiscus" because only the English Name counts, namely "Hibiscus." The Graphics aren't that of an AAA title, of course, but that's not bad. The Story, the Characters and the Atmosphere make that easily gone away. All in all, a Game I can only recommend.