Cantaloop is a simulation of a point and click adventure game.
Title: Cantaloop
Year Published: 2020
Designer: Friedemann Findeisen, Grzegorz Kobiela
Publisher: Lookout Games
Players: 1-4
Game Time: ~600 minutes
Set-up Time: N/A
Ages: 16+
Theme: A cartoony version of the real world
Mechanisms: Puzzle Solving, Deduction
How to win: Complete the story
Game Description
The point-and-click adventure game genre was born in 1976 on the PC. In this type of game, the player assumes the role of a character in an interactive story driven by puzzle-solving and exploration. This game is a direct adaption of these mechanics to the cardboard medium that requires no electronics to play. In other words, you are holding a classic point-and-click adventure game in book format. You will talk to characters, combine items to solve puzzles and explore a unique world to get ahead in the story.
How to play Cantaloop
A spoiler-free look at the Cantaloop gaming system including a follow-through of the tutorial and the core mechanisms so you can see if this game is for you.
Theme
The game is set in the real world. it’s a cartoony bizarre real world filled with idiots but it’s more like real life than most games.
The idiot part is standard for point & click games. They’re always full of people that don’t understand idioms and metaphors, they take things literally.
Setup & Rulebook
Setup involves opening the book and to start reading.
The rulebook is a few pages of an interactive tutorial that does a good job of introducing the mechanisms in a humorous, but not distracting way.
Components & Artwork
The book is OK. The red text filter thing works well. The way you turn pages is weird because the page number is on the previous page. So if you need to go to page 12, you grab page 13 and turn it over.
Everything else is standard but not bad.
Ease of Teaching & Accessibility
No need to teach really. You can show the items and what the codes in the book refer to and go from there.
There is no restriction to accessibility other than reading ability, possibly colour-blindness?
Cantaloop Summary
I’m not far in at the time of writing but until now I can compare it to games like T.I.M.E Stories or 7th Continent. These are exploration games and this is in a way. You have multiple paths to explore but eventually, you’ll do most of them I would think.
The positives are is that it’s a decent system that works. Combining all of the options and reading the results is good fun.
One of its best strengths is that writing. It’s hilarious in places and really reflects how these point and click videos games play.
The Negatives? Well, trying everything with everything else is tedious if you’re stuck. Going to different locations finding a thing and trying all of your things with it to progress the story takes AGES. It doesn’t help that I played Chronicles of Crime in a break from playing this and it does a similar thing, but with an app. The app removes the admittedly petty ‘hard work’ as I see it. 🙂
The use of the app streamlines the game a lot.
Cantaloop Round-Up
I only played it for an hour or so before getting bored of the system. Would rather see this as a proper book.
However, don’t let my comments put you off if you think it’s a game you’ll enjoy, I’m sure you will.
Rating
I give it 4/10