Translated by
Microsoft from French
Microsoft from French
Product received for free review on GameSideStory [www.gamesidestory.com], with better layout and screenshots.
Quadrilateral cowboy is the last game of Brendon Chung, the only member of the Blendo Games Studio, already author of a whole bunch of pretty things such as gravity bone, flotilla, Atom Zombie smasher or thirty flights of loving. Already winner of the IndieCade 2013, quadrilateral cowboy has been waiting since 2012 already, cumulating the rewards and the good returns following a first version of the game. It must be said that the pitch gave more than envy, the game being described as a cyberpunk adventure based around robations and hacking, all in the same vein as gravity bone and thirty flights of loving.
[...]
Quadrilateral cowboy follows the adventures through this retro-futuristic world (all taking place at the end of the twentieth century) of three women who, following the failure of their business, turn to hacking and robbery to earn a living. I would stick to it in terms of the story itself and the details, I think it's things that really deserve to be discovered through the so peculiar and exciting narrative specific to the games of Blendo games. And above all, Visual storytelling is often more likely to allow the freedom to interpret what is unfolding, I would like to avoid influencing any (future) players. The robations are thus presented in the form of puzzles with simple objectives – not unlike gravity bone – and must be solved by hacking, tapping on an old laptop commands to control the various gadgets that are obtained as the Game. Quadrilateral cowboy renews himself constantly, the different levels chained without being alike. The game arrives, by the efficiency of its gameplay and its narration, to install a certain routine in the player, supported by the "interludes" between each robbery, more oriented exploration and slices of life. We never get bored and, depending on whether you prefer exploration and discovery through a fascinating narrative or hacking and its puzzles (or both, of course!), the game will contain the player as much. On one side, you can pass all the missions or play in "tourist" mode, allowing to unlock all the doors. On the other, most exploration scenes can end in seconds if you are not curious or interested to search everywhere, and you can quickly access each level from the main menu to optimize and improve its score.
[...]
Quadrilateral cowboy is a marvel that I can't advise you, culmination of all the good things you could find in gravity bone and thirty flights of loving coupled with a particularly effective and exciting gameplay. I could not find any flaws, if not some frustrating crashes and a main menu sometimes confused. Quadrilateral cowboy is a fascinating and captivating Visual narrative, at the crossroads between gameplay, narrative and audio-visual ambience. A narration that can only be found in video games, since the narrative choices are induced as much by the creativity of the author as by the technical constraints, the gameplay choices or the observations of playtests, as evidenced by the the developer's comments embedded in the game. Quadrilateral cowboy is still a video game proving that the medium can be a source of real works of art (for those who have not followed in recent years!), without leaving aside the playful aspect.