Demetrios – The BIG Cynical Adventure Review

Every once in a while you’ll see such a strange release on the Switch’s eShop that you won’t know what to make of it. Demetrios – The BIG Cynical Adventure is one of those. The game originally released back in 2016 for computers and has since then seen a variety of ports on consoles and mobile platforms. While the Switch is no stranger to point and click adventure games, you can tell from the screenshots that this may be the most unique one yet. But does its quirkiness translate into a quality experience?

Despite its somewhat odd story and cast, Demetrios – The BIG Cynical Adventure is your standard point and click adventure game. You go from screen to screen interacting with hundreds of objects in order to solve puzzles and progress through the story. It’s a fairly paint by numbers affair, although there are a host of options to accommodate various play styles. The game takes full advantage of the Switch’s hybrid nature by allowing both Joy-Con cursor movements as well as touchscreen inputs – the best of both worlds. Other quality of life options exist, such as speeding up the cursor movement and pressing a button to reveal all of the interactive items in the environment. These are appreciated in today’s day and age.

One of the most conflicting aspects of this game lies in its art style. I will say that when I first saw this game, the screenshots didn’t impress me, and some of the character models really made me uneasy. However, the art looks much better in motion than it does in just the screenshots. Characters are animated when they talk and have a variety of facial expressions making them feel lively. The backgrounds look nice and have a lot of effort put into making them look detailed. The areas in the game have nice transitions from one another, and there are several smaller artistic decisions that really help to improve this game visually. The art does lack in a few areas, like with some of the comic panels or some of the side character designs, but overall there’s a lot of effort put into making you visually interested in the game.

One of the most important aspects of point and click adventure games is the writing, which Demetrios – The BIG Cynical Adventure nails perfectly. The story puts you in the role of a deadbeat antique collector, named Bjorn, who had his home broken into and one of his antiques stolen. Now you must embark on a very bizarre quest to track down the thief and retrieve your stolen property. While on paper the story may just seem OK, where it really excels at is in its execution. There’s an ample amount of absurd side characters you must interact with on your quest and the logic and reasoning your character exhibits when approaching different situations is quite entertaining. From the very first screen in the game you will most likely be invested in the story.

While it’s safe to say the adult humor in this game will be hit or miss for some people (the game is only rated Teen so it’s not too risqué), it is written very well. Trying to explain the humor of this game would be a great injustice to it, but let’s just say the jokes really pay off. The writing is detailed and humorous throughout, especially the observations of the hundreds upon hundreds of interactive objects in the game and the variety of surprising 4th-wall breaking jokes that you might not have expected. The game even adapts to the sensitivities that some of its players might have by giving them the options to either tone down or turn off the toilet humor in the game.

Similar to a movie, once you’ve experienced the jokes and know the solutions to the puzzles there’s very little incentive to run through it again. Still, don’t let that deter you from giving this one a try. The game should take many gamers at least five to eight hours to complete, so there’s plenty of entertainment here for a $10 game.

Jordan Brewer

Jordan is a gaming fanatic who grew up in a home of shovelware. Years of discounted drivel has molded this man, shaping him into the seeker of quality he is today.