Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
Developer: Pendulo Studios
System requirements: TBA
Genre: Adventure
ESRB rating: Not rated at press time
Release date: Q2 2012

Developed by Runaway veterans Pendulo Studios, Yesterday is an adventure game that removes the studio’s previous humor and implants a dark murder mystery in its place. Homeless people are found burned alive with mysterious Y-shaped scars on their palms. While investigating, our heroes get caught up in a world-wide conspiracy and a tangle of mind-bending puzzles. As you can see by the large, bloody pentagram in the trailer, Yesterday doesn’t hold back on the disturbing.

Like the popular Runaway games before it, Yesterday doesn’t skimp on the production values. Using a mixture of hand-drawn backgrounds and cell-shaded characters, the game creates a very evocative atmosphere, drawing you into every dark subway tunnel and abandoned overpass. Appropriate to the graphics, cutscenes are done in a comic-book style, lending action and movement to scenes without needing cutting-edge graphics.

Adventure games have fallen into a small niche in the last decade, and Yesterday takes many steps to climb back out. A hint feature gives you just the nudge you need to get past a frustrating puzzle. The system has a cool-down meter that slowly refills as you try solutions yourself, creating a nice balance. Best of all is the “Show Hotspot” button, which removes all the tedious pixel hunts that has plagued the genre and shows players all the interactive items on the screen. Don’t think that that Yesterday has gone soft, as your inventory quickly fills up with items, both useful and misleading. You’ll need all the help you can get.

With stylish artwork, intriguing story and frustration-free gameplay, Yesterday looks more like adventure gaming’s tomorrow. You unravel the plot through the viewpoints of multiple protagonists and go through more than a few twists along the way. No stranger to the genre, Pendulo Studios looks well-poised to bring this point-and-click thriller to life later this year.