Point and Click your way into some “Unusual Findings”

Ahh the Eighties, one of the most romanticised decades. Big hair, neon lights, pop music, exciting cinema and an era of wonder. This is the atmosphere that Epic Llama Games hopes to recreate with their game Unusual Findings.

One of the more popular game genres during the late eighties and early nineties was the point-and-click graphic adventure. A simple style of gameplay that had you control a character on screen by using a verb style interface, and often telling more intricate stories than other games outside of role-playing games. It’s a fitting touch that Unusual Findings is presented in this manner.

Unusual Findings began life as a Kickstarter project in 2021 receiving its funding and originally launched in 2022 but the developers kept supporting the game, and it will soon have its console release.

Our triumvirate of heroes is the brash and cocky Vinny, a stereotypical 80’s teenager complete with a red and white varsity jacket, who is our main character and blessed with the gift of the gab. Next, we have Nick, the brash one of the group dressed exactly like one of the Frog brothers from “The Lost Boys” with a red bandanna to match. Last up is Tony, the brains. Master of computers, science and all nerdy tropes.

They are typical teenage boys growing up in eighties America and are currently grounded for accidentally blowing up the neighbour’s yard. But boys will be boys and Vinny breaks out with the help of Nick as Tony has finally built the device to pick up and unscramble cable TV. However, instead of picking up the channels they wanted (I let you guess which one), they intercept a strange signal which coincides with a crash in the nearby forest. Hopping on their bikes to investigate, they get swept up in an adventure involving alien invasion, government conspiracies, secret facilities and making out in the back of vans.

Unusual Findings looks fantastic, it’s been lovingly drawn with pixel graphics. We have some excellent backgrounds and fluid animations all of which help it feel like the game was lifted directly from the era it’s emulating. If you loved eighties pop culture you will have fun finding all the easter eggs the developers have hidden everywhere from movie posters to certain side characters.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Unusual Findings was fully voice acted with some top-quality performances coming from all the actors. The actor who played Vinny sounded so much like him and delivered in such a cadence I swore it was Ben Schwartz of Sonic and Parks and Rec fame, but a quick IMDB search corrected me. The music is banging as well. During the intro, we were treated to Dead or Alive’s “Spin Me Round” setting the tone and the ambient music helps keep the mood.

The controls are as simple as operating the mouse, you click to move Vinny about, double click to move faster, and if there is an item that can be interacted with, a control interface will pop up where you can select look, use or talk. Talk will occasionally change contextually which did stump me for some puzzles until I noticed. Right-click can also be used to walk which was handy when there were larger objects of interest. At the top right of the screen, there was a UFO icon which would temporarily highlight all objects of interest on the screen. This ended up being extremely useful as I often get stuck.

You see, point-and-click adventures often suffered from what the community called “Moon logic”. An answer to a puzzle would be so bizarre that would only make sense to the puzzle writer and that would only be solved by brute-forcing the solution. Luckily, Unusual Findings doesn’t have this issue as I found myself figuring out the puzzles with some effort but I would often come across the other issue associated with these types of games. Pixel hunting.

I would often figure out that to solve a puzzle I would need a certain item, but could not find the item I needed at all. This wasn’t a fault of the game mind you and items aren’t difficult to see, but having the UFO icon really did help me out of these situations. I had missed entire areas of the map I don’t think I would have seen (because they are beautifully detailed) and in one instance a shadow I initially ignored led to all the items I needed, which led to a snowball of puzzle solutions.

Early on in the game, Vinny’s dad does hint that people will respond to your behaviour, and at certain points, you will be presented with dialogue choices to deal with situations. An example of this is when you are facing a pack of wolves, your choice is to be selfless and distract the pack or to tell your friends every man for himself and scatter. This clever branching mechanic changes how the game will play out reminiscent of a mechanic that was in the Indiana Jones point-and-click games.

In Unusual Findings, the choices you pick will change the group dynamic. Acting in defence of the group will make your friends help more while being selfish and rude will block off these puzzle branches, which in turn will influence the endings. There are multiple endings to chase and an optional puzzle tracker on the results screen with a promise of at least three playthroughs to see everything.

My only issues with Unusual Findings were minor. Some screens were a bit big and a “direct to overworld” button would’ve helped this. There was also no way to manually save, leaving every time I went to quit a nerve-wracking experience.

At the time of writing, the developers are set to release the “Vinny’s Diary” update, which will include a diary players can access to get Vinny’s thoughts on the adventure so far and get possible hints for puzzles.

Growing up in the eighties I loved this from start to finish. The attention to detail and all the little nods didn’t go unnoticed. Even the title is an obvious Stranger Things reference. The love, attention and continued support prove that Unusual Findings wasn’t a Kickstarter quick cash grab, and was truly a labour of love that is well worthy of your time.