15 Days

15Days

15 Days is the new adventure by House of Tales, the creators of “The Moment of Silence” and “Overclocked”. I only played the former of those two, and I remember that I liked it. Unfortunately, 15 Days doesn’t leave an equally well impression.

The game is centered around a gang of 3 young idealists who commit high-profile thefts such as the numbers of Big Ben’s clock. They live in a flat in London and they support pacifist organizations with the money they make. The game starts with them getting a job to steal a painting from a London museum which occurs at the same time as the mysterious death of the British foreign minister. Apart from those three one also controls Jack Stern of the “International Police” who is a chliché cop right out of Hollywood.

I have to say, this is probably my least favourite adventure game of this year. I didn’t find the story that great, however, the major problem is that there is way too little interaction. The inventory never gets larger than maybe 3-5 items, and most of the time there are very few choices where to go and few hotspots. When there is some interaction, it is at points unclear what has to be done. During the second theft of the gang, you have to time all security cameras in a museum using a stop watch in the inventory, however, it is not mentioned that this has to be done to continue. Also, the game felt a bit rushed at some points, for example, there is very little dialogue when examining one of the scarce hotspots.

What I liked about the game were the very nice backgrounds and some parts of the story. But overall, it is very far from the level of The Whispered World or some of the other adventures I played this year.