I first learned about Jenny LeClue a few years ago through Adventuregamers, after it had already been funded on Kickstarter. I followed the progression of the game through the developer's page and eagerly awaited the arrival of this beautifully animated detective game, led by a young girl no less!
I regret to say that even though the developers obviously put a lot of effort in this game, it’s poorly constructed in terms of gameplay, plot and pace. After spending 21 hours of my life on it, which I’m never getting back, I feel a bit outraged – so forgive my long review and negative rant. I really regret being a completionist since I otherwise would have deserted the game maybe an hour after trying it.
The thing that bothers me most is that even though the protagonist is a child, I didn’t expect the game to be aimed at kids and did not see any indication in the description or marketing that this was the case. But the pace and gameplay scream “slowed for kids to follow”, with repetitive and easy mechanics. I was expecting a cool, funny and challenging point and click adventure game, and got a visual novel with some low-challenge platforming and a frustratingly slow pace. Speaking of miscommunicating what the game is – nowhere is it mentioned that the game has countless boring and unchallenging platformer sequences.
I want to focus on the clunky and annoying mechanics – instead of clicking on items to make them work, the game forces you to tap repeatedly each time. What’s wrong with a simple point and click? Why do you have to make the players work hard to do something simple? The dialogues force you to press the enter button after each short sentence or description, and there’s a lot of them. Sometimes a magnifying glass appears and you have to search the screen for something hidden and hold till you see what it is. Every gameplay mechanic is repetitive and annoying – you find stickers for your journal (not interesting if you’re above a certain age), you have the simplest “put together parts of postcards”, you have to make electrical circuits work with the right flow. The only original puzzles in the game are syncing radio waves together to get messages, and deciphering messages from a book with a certain code. Though the puzzles are simple and not creative in general, the real sin is how much they recur; after the third identical puzzle solution (breaking a barrier by tapping 30 times in different places, for instance, which I had to do at least 5 times) – it’s not fun.
It takes the game forever to move past the introduction and actually get to the main mystery, and even after the long unveiling we’re left with a bunch of tired tropes (evil corporation! Cover-up! Things not as they seem! What is ridiculed at first is actually true!). To make matters worse, a lot of things are left unexplained and unaddressed, and the game ends with a cliffhanger! Yes, you get the infamous “to be continued” at the end after only part of the issues were resolved. A very long game just to get to a half-resolution so the developers can compel you to buy their next game? Not cool. Also, the frame story in which an author of detective stories struggles with his editor’s demand to make Jenny’s world more gruesome and murderous adds very little to the plot, is a tired trope, and makes the game longer with little value in return.
The music, like the gameplay, is repetitive and gets old very fast, and there is no voice acting that might have brought some flair to otherwise-stereotypical characters.
The art is really the one aspect that makes the game shine, and I really wish that the rest of the game had aligned with that.