Buy Richard & Alice

Richard & Alice is kind of ... okey-ish. I can't really say anything bad about, but also I can't say anything good either.
One could argue that it does things well considering it was done by a small team, but at the same time I see games like To The Moon or Miasmata that were made by even smaller teams but do so much more.
Richard & Alice will take around 3 hours to complete, so if you have money to spare and nothing else better to do, sure, why not, go play it, otherwise there is nothing new to see here.
If you haven't already done so, go play To The Moon instead, it is very similiar game but highly superior.
5/10

This game is quite hard to review. There's both good and bad points and overall, I can't recommend it.

Alright, let's get the bad done with.
The walking is terribly slow for such a big map, I dreaded getting to a point where I had to walk. I understand why the map is big I guess, it needs it for the story, to show the wasteland off. But it was very hard to get through the walking without wanting to do something else.
The story isn't so great. It is a really good concept, a wasteland of snow, the world coming to an end, but I don't think we saw enough. We didn't know much about the gangs, we didn't get much story from Alice's early predicament (before the game advanced a bit). It just seemed to lack a little, as I feel did the characters personalities.
The gameplay. It was difficult to know what to do, this is one of the games where you click everything together and hope for the best, at one point I had to bring up a walkthrough. Of course there are many people that enjoy this kind of game, but I seemed a bit too lost for most of it. Also, during the game you pick up notes and stuff to make the overall story, but I couldn't piece it together. I was very confused by the end as all these names were thrown around but couldn't link them.

Good bits!
It's beautiful and emotional. The art style is pretty and a lot of it reminds me of To The Moon. You can tell a lot's been put into this game and I can see people really enjoying it.

In my case, the good bits are a lot smaller than the bad bits, but that's just what I picked out. This was my personal experience and I'm fairly sure some will enjoy this, but personally I can't recommend it. I also feel it's a bit high priced but worth it in a bundle or something.

The developers seem to be browsing Steam reviews, which leaves me in an interesting dilemma. If I plunge forth with my typical double-fisted, pull-no-punches Steam Review vitriol, a developer will no doubt respond and be very civil and infect me with Sh­ithead's Remorse. However, if I soften the laser-focused, razor-sharp barbs of my serpent's cybertongue - making it "constructive" criticism, if you will - they may just mark the review as "helpful" and offer no further comment, hence leaving me open to accusations of being a "sellout" with no easy rebuttal. Hence, this hand-wringing introductory paragraph which hopefully is even more of a tedious chore to read than it was to type. Anyway, trigger warnings: Constructive Criticism, lack of excessively brutal cyberdunks and net.owns.

In an age of everlasting betas, this game stands out as an ironic example of a game that could really stand a final coat of paint before being shoved out the door. The story is mildly captivating (though both "twists" were readily predictable by the fifth game-day or so), but the script is pretty rough and could stand to be re-edited once more. Maybe English baby formula contains mercury or extra lead or something, but no American 5 year old would be quite this, er, saccharine. Even if artificial syrupy sweetness was the intent, there's still more effective ways to capture the hyperactivity of youth than "la-la-la, tra-la-la" repeated three or four times in a row. Characters in this game tend to speak in tangents, rather than as people - again, this may or may not be part of the post-apocalyptic intent, but if it's the intent, the dialogue should still be punched up a bit and made a bit less stiff and clinical. The script feels like the words someone would use in a script, rather than either natural dialogue or natural writing - one or the other would be the way to go.

Leaving the script aside, the "game" itself could also stand a brief "final revision". I typically don't mind a bit of backtracking here and there, but when the backtracking involves clicking multiple times on a huge scrolling screen, waiting for the droopy little character to trundle across before the screen scrolls enough to click again, it gets extremely tedious extremely quickly (to say nothing of the incessant CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH sound of the character in question walking through packed snow). A cardinal rule of adventure games is to try to keep each scene on a single screen if at all possible. I appreciate that the developers wanted to capture a bit of distance, but zooming the perspective out to an "overworld map" style would be so much better than depicting an entire "neighborhood" at the same scale as a single prison room. There's absolutely nothing "interesting" in between point A and point B that warrants such close zoom - no background fluff to click on and get a cute little scene-building dialogue reaction, and of course nothing particularly interesting to look at.

Finally, the story itself is "told" in a labyrinthine mix of tangent-dialogue, soliloquies [violating the Show Don't Tell Principle, but ehhh], and scraps of paper / journal entries which are presented rather non-linearly; confusing to form a narrative from and quite easily forgotten. This impacts the ending somewhat, as it makes it pretty hard to figure out exactly why the various characters in the ending emphasize the little details they do. I'm not someone who demands compact, simple, everything-explained scripts (for instance, I quite like how the game left a certain element - which those have played it can no doubt guess - pretty much a zen "so, this happened") - but, on the other hand, figuring out the various in-world factions, and the various characters within those factions, and what said factions did to other factions, and the little dramas and personal conflicts in between said factions, is pretty critical to understanding the ending beyond a surface-level "oh, yeah, this guy was a _____, I knew that was coming since the midpoint" -- but figuring that stuff out involves piecing together a handful of paper scraps and non-linear breadcrumbs.

So basically what you're left with is a moderately interesting setting, some random Adventure Game Style Puzzles (USE [INVENTORY] ON [BACKGROUND ITEM], ad infinitum), and some decent atmospheric music all brought down by a heavy-handed "rough draft" script, tedious backtracking, and characters who - mostly as a result of the unpolished script - are pretty hard to give a sh­it about one way or the other. If one digs a bit, there's easily the makings of a game worth $5.99 here, but what's on display isn't that game.

This game was very...okay. And that was the main problem with it. It felt as dull and monotonous as the snowy landscapes featured in all of Alice's scenes.

The game itself is pretty simplistic. The puzzles aren't that complicated but they are logical which is unusual for a lot of point-and-click games. It is an exercise in patience to get anywhere in the game when you're controlling Alice however. The world is much more expansive for her and she walks so slowly that you spend a lot of time watching her shuffle over white background with some sticks sticking out of it. And when you have to go back and forth between two locations, it gets ridiculously frustrating.

The story itself...it's very eh. I've seen it before. It's cliche and you can call it from the very beginning. Even the multiple endings aren't that original. It's bleak, it's depressing but there's no shock to it. And there's no emotion in it. You don't get very invested in it.

Sigh. The plot was interesting, the overall metaphor was great and I wasn't terribly bothered by the less than stellar graphics, but the gamplay is poor and overall I found this game predictable, easy and bland. The level designs left a lot to be desired (lots of open space which is painstakingly slow to move across, tons of repeated sprites/tiles, almost no interactivity with anything), useless "cut scenes" that are used over and over. Most of the story focuses on Alice, there isn't enough background on what Richard was going through. No desire to do another playthrough even though there are 4 more endings.

even 66% off

It's about 5 minutes of dialogue stretched out into unimaginably long and sometimes frustrating scavenger hunts.

Would have made a better short story (in a book with pages) then it does as a videogame.

cool story bro

Richard & Alice is a well-writen adventure. It is not easy for me to actually care about the characters unless they are well developed, which is definitely the case with this game. It doesn't deal with black and white and it is not a happy title, but it brings variety and makes you think along the way. I was invested in the story the whole time and wanted to see what was going to happen next. It has also an interesting way to tell the story, using different time periods.

In terms of gameplay, it is basically what you can expect of Point & Click games. The puzzles do make sense and they are not random, which avoids the impression that they were just made to be filler. If you are used to similar games, then you are going to encounter a familiar environment here, but in a setting that makes your purchase worthwile. I definitely recommend Richard & Alice to everyone even remotely interested.

It is well done and polished. It isn't a long game, but the few hours you are going to invest in it are definitely worth your time.

Personal rating: 7/10

PROS:
+ great story telling
+ really awesome gritty story
+ multiple endings
+ atmosphere

CONS:
- short game time
- slow walking
- MS-paint style graphics

Comment:
All aboard the feels train! This game really takes the post-apocalyptic setting and shows us how dark and gritty it is. Not by huge amounts of combat. It does it through it's characters, through the actions that the people who are trying to survive do. The story is great, the way we are served this story is even better. Piece by piece you uncover the truth. What brings down the score is the lack-luster gameplay (even for a point&click game) and the bad graphics. But despite these this is a fantastic piece of video game art I can really recommend!

Now don't get me wrong. Richard and Alice are not a terrible game.
But it's very very short, kind of predictable story and sometimes the game mechanic feels very slow and clunky and more like it gets in your way than anything else.
It goes amazingly quick to finish it and that left me feeling like I had wasted money on it, even though I bought it on sale.

An interesting short point-and-click adventure about two prisoners in a dystopian society where extreme weather has made survival difficult. Over the course of the game, Alice, a single mother, slowly reveals how she came to be imprisoned, in a series of flashbacks.

Overview:

The focus of this game is a moving, post-apocalyptic story. Two people are locked up together in a world covered with ice, and Alice tells how she got there, and so you are able to play as Alice during each part of her story.
This is a mature and very sad story, with very strong and heart wrenching questions, so do not expect anything cheerful.

Gameplay:

Simple point and click interface, with only the left and right mouse buttons to interact or the ENTER button in the keyboard to skip conversations (hold to skip faster). Simple puzzles that make sense and are logical, but not very challenging. I only got stuck once, because I did not know what I was supposed to do.

Sound:

Amazing sound effects that make you feel the bleakness of the environment. Really good!

Voice: None, only subtitles for dialogs

Graphics:

Simple but functional, not a problem for a story-focused game like this. Just make sure you configure the game (setup) before launching to play it in fullscreen and use Directx 3D 9. You'll need to copy and paste the game's exe file ("richardandalice.exe") and rename the copy as "richardandalice_steam_final.exe". Then just click on the game through steam and choose setup while starting it to uncheck "Run in a window instead of Fullscreen" and change the Graphics Driver to Directx 3D 9.

Story:

Very well written for an indie game, it makes you want to know what is going to happen next. There are many possible endings, and it was not hard to get them all with a guide, after I was finished with the game. By the way, I recommend saving in the beginning of each scene to help you come back later for the other endings.

Conclusion:

This is a great game if you like story rich games that make you think and get involved with the game world. If you want hard puzzles, fast action or shining graphics, look elsewhere.

If you have any further doubts or need any help, please post a comment. Thanks for reading!

This is one of the best point and click adventures I've ever played. I have a 5 yr old daughter. I guess it hit home for me. I thought this was very well written. I cried twice. I cried damnit all. The music is well done too. I love this game. I might even play it again.

Richard and Alice guides the player through an interesting story. It started out slow at first, but as you learn more about Alice, the story starts to pick up.

However, the world exploration, clunky maneuvering through the space, and simple puzzles that occured between the dialogue took away from the strong storytelling.

Awesome point-and-click game full of sadness and despair. Memorable characters, interesting storyline, nice soundtrack.

Overly Simple puzzles. Conversations that go on forever with limited choices. The choices you make must have some meaning but it is just guesswork until you see the ending. Long pauses and slow walking pace are frustrating. This is more like an old choose you own adventure story than a game.

Not a fan but there is some replay value if you want to see alternate endings.

A point and click that fails to really get anywhere until the end... the very end. You mostly play as Alice, although even at the end it makes you somehow believe that Richard is the main character. The story seems straight forward, and on a good note, you don't even realise that the decisions you make change the story. However, the dullness of the story, with the awkward chit-chat between Richard and Alice is either like when you go on your first date, or of 6 year olds, doesn't balance out to be worth the end. If the game took half as long to complete, I would recommend this game on it's sale price. I will wake up tomorrow completely forgetting I have played this.

Richard & Alice is a great game for anyone interested in tales of “end of the world” scenarios or who like a very personal story in their gaming experience. It is incredibly short for an adventure game, lasting only about three hours give or take. And that includes clicking on every object in the game and seeing the messages spewed forth. I would have loved to hear voice acting, but having played adventures since the ’80s I’m willing to overlook such an omission. Others, however, may see this as a major dealbreaker. If you can overlook this, though, you’ll find a gripping tale of loss, heartbreak, and emotions that run rampant. And the multiple endings (about four in all) show just what a person is willing to do to stay alive in a place that couldn’t care less what happens to you.

http://www.kickstartadventure.com/home/richard-alice-review/

I enjoyed playing Richard and Alice. It's more of an adventure game, but the story had me legitimately interested to see how the characters would develop and just what the hell was going on. Little bit of replay value even for a slightly altered ending. If you see this one go on sale and you have a few short hours to kill, pick this one up and enjoy the atmosphere.

Great experience.

Super slow paced point-and-click adventure game with well written dialogue and a mostly interesting story. The game involves a lot of trudging through snow, and it does not make the process particularly quick. Recommended for those with patience.