8.8 /10 1 Votes8.8
4.7/5 GOG Developer(s) Wormwood Studios Programmer(s) James Spanos Writer(s) Mark Yohalem Initial release date 5 December 2012 Genre Adventure game | 10/10 Steam 6.8/10 IGN Designer(s) Mark Yohalem Artist(s) Victor Pflug Composer(s) Nathaniel Chambers | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Similar Wadjet Eye games, Adventure games | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Primordia is an award-winning point-and-click adventure game developed by Wormwood Studios and published in 2012 by Wadjet Eye Games. It is the highest user-rated adventure game on Steam, and one of the highest user-rated adventures on GOG.com and Metacritic. It has been translated by fans into Russian, French, and Spanish; Korean, Portuguese, Polish, and German translations are also in progress. In 2016, Primordia was released on iOS devices.
Contents
Plot
Set in a post-apocalyptic, post-organic world, the game follows the story of the android Horatio Nullbuilt (voiced by Logan Cunningham) and his floating robot companion Crispin Horatiobuilt (voiced by Abe Goldfarb). They inhabit the UNNIIC, a derelict airship stranded in a vast desert.
When an unknown, outsider robot attacks the UNNIIC and robs their only power source, Horatio and Crispin are forced to depart on a quest for energy that brings them to the legendary city of Metropol.
Gameplay
Unlike in many adventure games, Primordia's puzzles are generally grounded in real-world logic and offer multiple solutions, a direct reflection of the game's writer and designer, Mark Yohalem's Harvard Law education and career as lawyer. How the player solves the puzzles—and what choices the player makes—determines which of the game's many endings takes place.
Primordia has a typical point-and-click interface: a left mouse click to interact with objects, a right click to examine them. Every function needed is always available from a drop-down control panel that appears when you move the pointer to the top of the screen. Inventory items can be combined in the inventory UI and may be used on every hotspot and character. Crispin can be told to interact with objects, too. Crispin also serves as a hint-system blended in appropriately within the game in order to avoid breaking the fourth wall. As Horatio and Crispin wander about, a datapad automatically stores codes, passwords and information about the world. The datapad also contains a map which allows fast travel (whenever that's available) with one click to every known location. Conversations with other robots are handled in a multiple choice fashion. There is both a manual and an automatic save system to make sure your progress is saved.
Critical reception
Primordia received positive reviews from independent and genre websites, and mixed reviews from larger sites. AdventureGamers described Primordia as "a gorgeous, clever, and melancholy science-fiction parable" with "beautiful, surrealistic retro graphics [that] drip with atmosphere." The site also awarded it Setting of the Year for its "haunted world, one that oozes history far more detailed than the events laid out by the game’s exposition, and one that stuck with us long after we left it behind."
Hardcore Gaming 101 praised Primordia as "the first graphic adventure game of recent memory to be truly worthy of being compared to the triumphs of the glory days,", and Pop Matters called it "an evolution of the genre . . . leaps and bounds more interesting because its ideas are more complex and intricate." Other sites praised its story as one of the best science fiction stories in any medium for years. Primordia also enjoys high user ratings: 8.9/10 on Metacritic, 4.7/5 on GOG.com, and "overwhelmingly positive" (98%) reviews on Steam. As of September 16, 2015, Primordia was the 17th highest-user-rated game on Steam, and the highest-rated adventure game.
By contrast, larger sites such as IGN and GameSpy complained that the puzzles were too numerous and too difficult, that the game's low resolution did a disservice to its graphics, and that the game's humor could be jarring.
On Metacritic it holds a score of 72/100.
iOS release
An iOS port of Primordia was released on September 21, 2016. This version modified the controls to accommodate a touch-screen interface and changed the font to be more readable on a smaller screen. Its reviews from larger sites have been positive, and its Metacritic score is 81/100. TouchArcade rated the game 9/10, describing it as "brilliant": "The writing is stellar, the voice acting is ace, the style is top notch, and the soundtrack perfectly sets the tone." 148Apps.com rated it 4/5, praising its "great art, clever puzzles, and fantastic world building."
"Fallen"
In June 2013, Wormwood Studios released "Fallen," a spoiler-free spin-off story set after the game's ending, which was praised for its writing and art. "Fallen" is available for free as a PDF, ePUB, or animated audiobook. It has been translated into German, Italian, and Spanish.