Finding Polka Sends A Girl And Her Dog Through A Ballpoint-Pen City
A small publisher-backed adventure built on a single walk through a hand-drawn city, where the only interactive figures are the ones in trouble, tests whether curiosity about incidental detail can carry a game on its own.
Reporting from 1 source: Game Spark.
Game Spark's Terukazu Yoshida played Finding Polka, an interactive adventure from developer lidlocks and publisher PARCO GAMES. The heroine, Frendy, spots a dog in the city that looks exactly like her former pet Polka and sets out to find it with her dog Jazz. Helping residents in trouble turns them into friends, and the field is drawn in ballpoint pen.
The path through the city is mostly fixed. Forks close off through things like road closures, so progress comes from helping the people who are stuck. Someone wrapped in bandages is about to be stabbed with a huge syringe. A muscular man stands in front of a person walking while looking at a phone. Only the people in trouble can be spoken to, but the ones drawn in the background still read as if they have their own stories.
Along the way Frendy finds dog droppings and stops to inspect them, on the chance they belong to Polka.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.