Nerd Girl Thoughts

Developer: Change Studios
Release Date: July 31, 2021
MSRP: Free

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It took me about half an hour to confirm that An Odd Tale is most definitely Not For Me. The awkward self-referential humor wouldn’t have been too bad if only there’d been less of it, but of the 30 minutes I played, at least half was spent clicking through tedious dialogue that just wasn’t landing for me as funny. I pushed through because I was hoping the combat sections would redeem it, but if anything, at least for me, the combat was worse than the writing.

For a game with a lot of talking going on, I was having a difficult time following the storyline. You leave your hometown, armed with pretty much absolutely nothing, to go meet up with a wizard who knows a little bit about someone doing some kind of mind control. He sends you to see a farmer, who most definitely knows more than he does, and it is at this out of the way farm that you get your first look at your enemies.

The combat screen is dark and uninformative, and I only had a single ability to use, and it was a damage over time spell with a three round cooldown. So basically, combat for me was a lot of clicking “END TURN”. Now, I did purchase a melee weapon, but couldn’t figure out how to use it, so I’m not entirely sure if it’s meant to just be a stat stick? I have no idea because nothing is well explained, and in a lot of cases, it’s not explained at all. I feel like a little less cheesy dialogue and a little more tutorial would have gone a long way towards making this more playable.

I did, however, find the art style charming – in fact, it’s the reason why I picked An Odd Tale out in the first place. Considering that this free to play title was put together by a couple of high school students, it’s definitely impressive, even if it isn’t very fun to play.

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