Cantaloupe Chronicle

Times have been rough for any kind of press lately, with the gaming press in particular facing an unseen number of layoffs. Who’d want to be a journalist, right? Luckily, there are still young people who choose to take that risk, to get out there and let their voice be heard on all types of different subjects. In the world of Cantaloupe Chronicle, you are one of those youngsters with dreams of making it big within the world of journalism. But every path needs a first step, and for you, that’s an internship at the titular newspaper. And it’s an interesting step, to say the least.

I’ll be honest: I had the wrong expectations for this game. Having played Times & Galaxy last year, I had expected something similar, if smaller in scale. The game’s solo dev Tim Rachor promised an innovative article-writing system and classic point-and-click gameplay with a modern touch, so maybe I should have known that gameplay in Cantaloupe Chronicle would be different from Copychaser Games’ underrated gem. So my first impressions of the game were surprising, as I hadn’t expected it to stick so rigidly to the point-and-click genre.

The game sees you arrive in the town of Cantaloupe, named after just about the only thing that will grow there, and to call it a town might be incredibly generous. As the signs on either side of the town say, the population is 12 people. How does a newspaper manage to stay alive in a town with only a dozen inhabitants? Apparently, subsidies – although those must be doing some very heavy lifting.

The cool thing about the game is that it allows you to get to know everybody. There are barely any people who are just set dressing: all of them play roles in the different stories you uncover. You start out with only being able to walk around the town centre and visit the lake, but as you continue, you’ll unlock new locations. Getting those does not make the previous locations obsolete, though, with every one having a vital spot in the central mystery of the game.

Despite being a rather small town, Cantaloupe has a rich history. There are rumours of alien visitors, government cover-ups and even murder, something you’ll get to delve into, as the main reporter for the paper hasn’t managed to get to the bottom of it. If that seems like a pretty big deal for an intern who’s facing her first job at her aunt’s newspaper, that’s because it is. I got emotional whiplash from the difference between the local stories you get to cover – starting out with the town’s fishing competition, which consists of two people – and the big mystery that holds the game together.

Gameplay consists of very typical point-and-click fare. You set out to talk to people, trying to find the right catch to make your story interesting. To get to that point, you have to do more than just interview the townsfolk, though. You’ll have to set things in motion by solving puzzles. These did not make me very enthusiastic, if I’m being honest. They feature the same kind of logic that usually sees me back away from games in the genre because of how far-fetched some of the solutions are. The game does have an interesting hint system, with you calling your mother, who reads the tarot cards to set you on the right track. That system doesn’t feel totally optimised though, with me getting the same hints over and over when I needed help on a different puzzle.

Sadly, this means that the puzzles often come down to clicking everything, combining all of your items and seeing where that gets you. For example, early on in the game, you have to convince one of the people in the fishing tournament to let the other competitor come back to the contest. Because of reasons, you end up having to get him a beer in order to convince him, but as you’re underage, you can’t buy a beer. So you find an empty beer bottle and then have to get the label off to put that on a bottle of root beer that looks very similar.

To get the label off, you have to heat some water in the kitchen of your uncle’s home, but to do so, you need a pot, which you basically have to steal from the local diner. Because for some reason, there are apparently no pots in the kitchen that’s available to you. It’s this kind of convoluted thinking that had me bounce off of the game to the point of not finishing it, despite having to review it.

It doesn’t help that the actual gameplay and puzzle solving feel pretty archaic. You constantly have to go into your menu to get the items you need, but that’s the same menu where you find your dialogue history, the story beats to the story you’re working on, etc. It doesn’t translate to a smooth gaming experience at all, and that’s a shame.

Because there are some great ideas hidden in Cantaloupe Chronicle. The writing is fun, even if it doesn’t always make sense. Letting a child solve one of the town’s deepest secrets takes me back to the detective novels I used to read as a kid, where it’s always up to the kids to save the day. And despite the visuals being pretty barren, I actually like them. Well, most of them: there’s one motion that happens when you don’t do anything for maybe a single second, where your character gestures as if to ask, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ and it annoyed me more than I care to admit.

I’m guessing that, if you’re quite new to the point-and-click genre, you might get a lot of fun out of Cantaloupe Chronicle, as it feels like a welcoming place to kickstart your connection with this kind of game. But if you’ve already played some of the classics, this might not be up to scratch for you. And if you’re put off by the astounding video game logic the genre often has to offer, then this won’t be a game for you, as it wasn’t for me.