Rauniot Review in Progress – There’s a Spark, I think

Here is our Rauniot Review in Progress. We checked out the post-apocalyptic adventure game made in Nothern Finland.

Confession time. I’m not sure if this will cost me any reviewer credibility points which is why this won’t be scored (for now). Honestly, it is kinda embarrassing to confess this but it will hopefully make an entertaining read before I can review this game thoroughly.

So please enjoy my extended thoughts on the first 6 screens of Rauniot a game that looks cool. And I would’ve loved to play more but at this point, I’m not sure if I’m blind, stupid or the review copy is just bugged.

Rauniot Review in Progress

The premise of Rauniot, its look and feel is very promising from the get-go. Instead of having a natural disaster and outside factors meddling with things, the first few minutes establish there are no mutants and zombies screwing things up. the world is going to shit and we may as well be going down with it.

You start off playing as Aino who is on the lookout for a friend to do some sort of job that takes her out into the wilds where people are barely scraping by on dog food and the occasional lone wanderer.

And that’s about as far as I got. The game has good vibes, looks fantastic in its pre-rendered retro aesthetic and the sound is immaculate. It’s that from the word go, its blown-out colors and beautifully cluttered environments make it hard to see what is the background and what is interactable.

Now if you’re familiar with the adventure game of old, you’re familiar with the pixel hunting that sometimes required to find items or things to interact with. That was annoying 30 years ago and is a nightmare now on a big 4K screen. It could do with some kind of option that highlights all the interactable objects on the map.

Why? Because I got stuck, spent 2 hours on the first 6 screens trying to find something that let me progress further and decided to start writing this instead. Dear developers at Act Normal Games, I really don’t know if I’m too dense to play your video game, so read this as a plea by someone who enjoyed the 20 minutes he got to play.

Just a little highlight or clue. Anything. I’ve been trying to find the second wrench someone stole from my car for 2 hours now and clicked and interacted with everything I could find to progress, but nothing happened.

Aside from that I’d like to reiterate that Rauniot is a very pretty game that sounds well and has me intrigued. I would just like to find that second wrench so I can continue on my journey. And I hope this review will make more sense in a couple of days/weeks.

For more game reviews and more on Rauniot check us out here on ESTNN