80 Days

Developer: Inkle

Publisher: Inkle

Release: 2014

Platform: PC (played), Mac, Android, iOS

Genre: Interactive fiction

80 Days picks a solid source to draw ideas from--even if it isn't the very best on Jules Verne's catalogue it can be a reassuring one to work with due to the scope of the premise being pretty straight-forward from the start--and develops it into a multimedia piece.

When this take on the story flirts with steampunk upgrades results are just bland; but the writing itself is interesting enough to keep a player hooked, even if some decisions aren't necessarily meaningful--curiosity for the outcomes of a particularly intriguing dialogue tree will frequently be the fuel that keeps conversations going.

Mechanics-wise 80 Days can be better compared to another adventure series, more familiar to gamers than to literates: Carmen Sandiego. It unfolds as the player gathers intel that inform future decisions regarding the trip--available routes, paths closed and so on--but that comes at the price of spending time, by far the most important resource in the game. Just like with Carmen, asking around--and sleeping, and waiting--gives the clock a spin, and that may be decisive by the end of the game. The second resource to be aware of is money, but Mr. Fogg has quite a decent amount of funds available to draw from--as long as you can find a bank and wait for the funds to arrive (once again, draining time). At least managing funds adds an extra layer of complexity to the gameplay itself, since you may learn people in New Orleans would pay a lot for harmonicas and maybe you should bring one there for some easy cash, for instance--it's a bit on the light side but still a refreshing meta nevertheless.

The artstyle is clean and distinct

In the eyes of a classic gamer, 80 days has a downside that may be game breaking for some: arbitrariness. Some careful planning can be thrashed to pieces in a second when unpredictable events come into play. But maybe that's for the better; it steers the game away from a simplistic (and common in games as a medium) cause/consequence mindset to push it towards the piece of art it’s based on--or even further, being art that imitates life.