Satirical Point-and-Click Adventure Irony Curtain to Lift the Veil on Satire, Totalitarianism in 2019
KATOWICE, POLAND — 25 July 2018 — Irony Curtain, the hilarious satirical point and click adventure set in a totalitarian communist country, tears down walls and arrives on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC when Artifex Mundi releases their forthcoming title in 2019.
“Our glorious country of Matryoshka wishes to extend an invitation to the West, and allow them to witness the glory of communism first-hand. Visitors shall be the first outsiders to bask in the light of The Leader, who is the embodiment of all that is good and not the “demon, blood-drunk butcher, or godless dictator” non-believers would have you fear.
We welcome them to explore our beautiful country and political realm by solving puzzles and minigames to understand the depth of corruption surrounding the magnanimity of our fearless leader. This sponsored visit includes a meeting with our Minister of Propaganda Communication, Vlad. The Minister’s job is completely unnecessary, but our country has zero tolerance for unemployment because it shows the West that we are stronger than them.
While our guests aren’t busy submitting themselves to unnecessary strip-searches, they will try to finagle their way through tricky scenarios using creative combinations of items. Our gorgeous, colorful hand-drawn country ensures that foreign eyes will always bask in the glory of our people and natural splendor. It is our hope that these beautiful images draw their eyes away from our impoverished wealthy citizens so they do not try to steal our secrets.”
– Department of Propaganda Communication
Irony Curtain will be available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC 2019.
About Artifex Mundi
Artifex Mundi made a name for itself with hidden object games like Enigmatis and Nightmares from the Deep series. Now, over 150 creators strong, the team wants to show the gaming community their strength in creating worlds. Divided into smaller crews, each team is working on passion projects of their choosing.
To learn more about Artifex Mundi please visit the studio’s official website.
With the elves leaving to the mainland, humans began to settle on the land of Alfheim and founded a new kingdom named Astoria where they began to thrive. That is until the Lombardian Empire turned their sights towards the now vibrant island, waging a war that was only held at a deadlock thanks to Astoria being assisted by elves from the mainland and special tools named Armonics, instruments capable of using special magics that were given to the people by the great Shining Dragon of legend.
It is interesting to note that right off the bat Shining Resonance Refrain recommends that players should try the original story first before playing the Refrain version, since the Refrain version contains a few extra tidbits of information and two characters that will almost immediately join your party even though they are enemies in the main game. That being said, there really are no downsides to actually playing this mode right away as not only will extra content be included but there is very little in the way of actual story spoilers with the addition of these two characters other than their party addition being rather odd.
All of the characters, both female and male, can be talked through at bonfires with special “Night Events” that will allow you to grow closer together and eventually you can even go on dates in the main city to unlock additional pieces of their storyline, fleshing out these characters to a rather satisfying degree. This is especially true in the case of the bonus characters included in the Refrain mode.
Outside of town players will find that there is a very large world open to them where enemies can be found roaming the wilds and inside of dungeons. There is no option to perform an advanced attack on enemies, instead when you grow close enough to them combat will automatically begin and take place in real time in that location. Combat works with players controlling a specific character while the rest of your party follows orders that can be changed at any time.
This AP system does feel like it slows combat down a bit too much at times but thankfully between the combination of Force attacks, a wide array of skills to unlock and eventually choose from, and the ability for Yuma to transform into the Shining Dragon at the risk of going berserk, and you’ll find that there is plenty of depth to this combat system. This is especially true in regards to the B.A.N.D. system that allows your characters to perform a song together that will provide various buffs to the party depending on who is performing in the center.
Shining Resonance Refrain boats both an impressive Japanese dubbing as well as a well handled English voice track, giving players a satisfying option to choose between and swap whenever they wish. The background music is also rather impressive in nature as all of the standard music is pleasant on the ears and there is a rather large amount of vocal tracks included in the game thanks to the musical nature of some combat elements.