With October upon us are you in the mood for a game that touches on some dark and perhaps sensitive topics and themes? Then you might want to check out the new point-and-click adventure game from Barcelona based studio Mango Protocol called Agatha Knife. Don’t let its cute comic art style deceive you, this game is about killing animals and building your own religion called Carnivorism.
In this game you play as Agatha, a seven-year-old insomniac that befriends animals and then proceeds to murder them later on. She does this because her mom’s butcher shop needs the animals in order to stay open so die they must. When the time comes to kill them though Agatha struggles with seeing the fear of their impending demise on their faces. To deal with this she forms her own religion called Carnivorism which is built around the idea for the animals to basically be happy that they are being murdered. Yes this story is dark but I also found it somewhat funny at times. If some of the subject matter bothers you though you may want to avoid this one. It’s also worth pointing out that this game is set in the same universe as the studio’s first game MechaNika that came out several years ago so if you were a fan of that then you may want to pick this game up too.
The gameplay in the game isn’t anything new and is mostly what you’d expect from a point-and-click game. You’ll navigate through different areas all the while going up and talking to people and using items in the environment at times in order to solve puzzles. I didn’t find any of them to really be very difficult and certainly nothing that required me to go look up a guide online so if you are concerned about that worry not. The developers also filled their world with references that geeks will notice such as things like Aliens and Power Rangers. While playing though I found the controls felt a little wonky to me. The left stick moves you while the right stick moves a cursor around the screen that you use to select things or people to interact with. This cursor though didn’t control well in my opinion and made things more difficult than they should’ve been. The game should take you only a few hours to finish though which isn’t bad considering the asking price.
The comic art style is one of the most striking things about Agatha Knife and the thing that stood out about the game the most to make me take notice of it. They say it was heavily inspired by 90’s anime and it really shows throughout the game as you can see for yourself in these screenshots. You’d think you’re looking at a game meant for a younger audience here until you see all the darkness and murder within it. By all means keep the kiddies away from this one. There is no voice acting in this game but it had a pretty solid soundtrack. As for trophies, the game has 31 in total with a Platinum to obtain. There are some fun ones here to chase after and you’ll more than certainly have to play the game more than once to get them all so long as you aren’t using a guide or something.
There is no doubt that the subject matter that Agatha Knife is built on won’t be for everyone but if any of this sounds interesting to you than I recommend it. It isn’t challenging and the controls can use some tuning but I love the art style the developers went with for this game and the dark story mixed with humor was enjoyable from start to finish for me.
*Agatha Knife is available now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Reviewed on a PS4 Pro. Review copy provided by the publisher for this review.