Deponia is the story of lovable loser Rufus who is trapped on a junk planet and surrounded by people who seem both fond of him and sincere when they wish him well on his plans to leave the planet far behind him. Our hero has two women in his life, one is his ex-girlfriend who he still lives with and one is a tall and lovely woman who falls from the sky and spends the bulk of the game unconscious. Rufus meets a number of odd and interesting people who tend to get in the way of his reaching his goals. Which reminds me, the name of Rufus’ new girl is Goal, just in case the gamer couldn’t figure it out.
And that’s about the only real problem with Deponia, it has a built in hint system that can’t be turned off. Rufus automatically gives you hints every time he looks at something. While these comments are often humorous, they also tend to make the solution to puzzles a little too obvious. On the other hand there are Mini Games which seem to rely more on random luck than any puzzle solving skill the player might have. The result is an abundance of overly easy puzzles and a handful of downright impossible ones. Deponia also contains a number of the usually oddities of the point and click adventure game-characters handle invisible items, rooms are filled with clickable items that can’t be clicked when you first encounter them, and the in game logic often isn’t very logical.
But hey, it’s a game! Minor gripes aside Deponia was a lot of fun to play with any number of laugh out loud moments. Near the beginning people are talking about why they want Goal in their home and everyone talks about what a help she would be cleaning up and cooking and such. Rufus is shocked by this and they ask him what do you want do with her? He gets a dreamy look on his face and smiles-until his name is repeatedly called and he comes back to reality. There are countless little gags of one sort or another, usually at Rufus’ expense.
The story is pretty straightforward and your goal is to move from one point to the next by completing often random tasks and filling your inventory with anything you can pick up. There’s lots of dialogue in the form of popup menus with comments you can choose. My favorite conversation came late in the game when Rufus meets a Pirate and warns him to stay away from Goal. The gameplay is much like other adventure games with the exception of the inventory, which works via the mouse wheel, whereas most games call up the inventory with a right click. This lead to a lot of repeated dialogue as I kept hitting the right button instead of the wheel while trying to get to inventory.
Deponia is a pretty game that has an Anime mixed with Loony Tunes quality to it. There is also the occasional appearance by a steampunk minstrel who fills in a few gaps between scenes and there is always some music or random sound in the background. Deponia was cute and funny and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The end of Deponia is not the end of the story, however, there are two more games in the sage of Rufus and Goal. The fact that it ends with a To Be Continued in no way diminished my enjoyment of it. It just means I have two more trips to Deponia to look forward to.
