The pixel hunt in point-and-click games is an outrageously frustrating exercise I really abhor, particularly since I’m not the sharpest knife in the ✅drawer, and I’m also quite near-sighted. In these instances walkthroughs (shoutout to guide writers!) would be absolutely pivotal; how am I supposed to comb through the screen in search of an object that would only be three by three pixels large? My playthroughs usually conclude with a splitting headache and w♏atery eyes.
If On A Winter’s Night, Four Travelers unfortunately suffers from this troubling issue as a point-and-click pixel adventure, but it’s a testament to just how exceptional it is when I can say that I’m ready to overlook this small and often distasteful flaw. For one thing it’s a compact adventure that lasts no more than three hours—a reprieve from the hours-long adventures that pad themselves with unnecessary drivel to justify their costs. Another intriguing aspect of the game is that it’s excellently paced, as it relates the sorrowful tales of three travelers (I’ll let you decide who the fourth traveler is) without ever wearing out its welcome. In this game, these travelers are on board a steam train in typical masquerade attire, with animal masks that disguise their facade. The inexplicable twist is that they don’t remember how they𝄹 came to be on this train, even as they relate their experiences to the train conductor, one at a time. The first was a man who was supposed to meet his lover at a hotel; the second was an aristocratic lady who was waiting for her husband to come home, and the third a doctor seeking knowledge and power by drawing powers from alchemy and the occult.
Rather than picꦺk up and store a small repository of objects in your pockets, If On A Winter’s Night⛦, Four Travelers simply gets you to examine your surroundings and solve some puzzles. Some objects still need to be picked up, but at least you only need to hold on to them one at the time, which negates my other grievance with the point-and-click genre: the suggestion of needing to combine several items that can magically conjure a solution. The tale unfurls at a gradual and unhurried pace, but it’s also adept at revealing hints of the mystery behind the travelers’ experiences without overwhelming the player. This makes the emotional catharsis at the finale of every story arch heartachingly palpable and impeccably elegant.
That said, the puzzles can still be frustrating and obtuse at times. At one point, you’re supposed to retrace the steps of a spectral figure, who is only seen crying and collapsing at specific spots of a garden, in order to progress through the story. But this puzzle can feel like a fruitless endeavour at times, since it was a struggle to figure out how their posture and demeanour connect to one another, like putting together a fragmented scene from a broken film reel. There are sꦬeveral other puzzles too that feel a tad impossible without combinღg through a guide, but fortunately isn’t that far out of reach (you can thank me later).
It’s perhaps preposterous to suggest that, for all the flaws that I’ve pointed out about the game, that If On A Winter’s Night, Four Travelers is a perfe𝕴ct slice of video game storytelling. And I’m not saying it is, really. But even though many of these concerns are recycled remnants of old-school point-and-click design, the travelers’ stories still pulse with unbridled energy, the pistons of their experiences ceaselessly propelling the game forward. Peel away the dazzle of its detailed pixel art environments and take away the sometimes confounding puzzles, and If On A Winter’s Night, Four Travelers reveals itself as a game that tells an incredibly moving story. All these, too, for the price of absolutely free&mda🃏sh;you’d be remiss to pass on this one.