Puzzles are reasonably varied within the limits of real world sensibility, especially thanks to the status changes of time travel. Said trickery errs on the easy side, maintaining a smooth pace through the game. I was never stuck for long, and I enjoyed figuring out the trickier answers myself. Puzzles are logical, enjoyable, and well-placed. When his fate became apparent, it carried the emotional weight intended. Joe’s intelligence, empathy, and Bro Average quirks endeared me to him. He treats others with concern, recoiling when the player attempts some act of theft or violence – much to my relief at a point when I feared I had to do a very bad thing with a deadly implement. Joe struggles with the greater turns of events and the horrors he encounters. He’s also no fan of modern art – though that’s more a matter of aesthetic preferences, as is his admission to a certain form of macho enhancement. He does have a naivete that serves the plot, but it follows from being trained to keep his head down and know his place in a mysterious corporation where he can’t know too much. He describes items and obstacles as if knowing what to do and lacking the means to do it, and reacts – oftentimes with funny or informative detail – when a wrong solution is tried. His speech is laced with a broad base of knowledge and the occasional pun, sometimes with a remark about needing new material. Instead, he’s a down to earth Everyman with pragmatic smarts and a focus on staying positive in the face of calamity. Joe could have been a bland font of exposition like too many other playable characters.
I stayed up well past my bedtime just to see it through in one shot – then replayed it later for the details I had missed. As an experience, it rises above this common foundation with engaging atmosphere, smooth pacing, and pervasive situational humor. On paper, The Silent Age is a standard point and click puzzler with a familiar time travel premise. Can this groovy cat take out the trash and clean up the future? When double duty gets dumped on his stylishly shaggy head, he stumbles across warnings of the apocalypse. Joe the janitor toils at the bottom of a thankless corporate hierarchy.
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