The Impossible Travel Agency is a simple game that puts the player up high on a mountain spire near a flowerbed and a little puddle of water. This is all there is to the entire game and it is a simple afternoon-to-night (or morning-tonight for the seasonal map) experience that lasts roughly 6 minutes.
There is not much to do but sit or stand and watch the experience unfold before your eyes. I admit I got a little Miyazaki as I watched a train? a set of people? or something going up the little spires off in the distance. Each of the spires out had these little lit groups that eventually reached the top and setup a bonfire and released paper lanterns into the night sky.
Music plays throughout the experience and the flowerbeds and lightning strikes in the clouds below pulse with the beat. This is a great touch and I wished the experience lasted longer than it was. It would be nice to just sit and watch the time elapse, but once you hit early morning the game just ends.
There is a Seasonal Pack that was added to the original game that adds a Halloween atmosphere with spiders, red eyes in the trees, pumpkins, ghosts, and a giant specter/demon. It is really cool, be aware that a giant spider does crawl up the ledge behind the player and will stare at you for a while before crawling back down. Just in case you have a thing against spiders.
At $4.99, you are getting 2 really short experiences that are cool to watch once. I would recommend you waiting for this to dip down to $1.99 before picking it up as there are games out there at this price point that offer a lot more enjoyment and replay. It is a decent tech demo that does not require the player to be heavy into Immersion, which is its strength and greatest downfall. Hopefully we will see more games from this company as this was a good start for them.
AUTHOR INFORMATION
The controls function when they are properly setup. Sometimes you will jump into the game and it will take a bit to get things working. The controllers do not seem to do anything but show up as large chess pieces with nothing to them.
Both levels have stylized art to accompany it, and the levels have an impressive day to night cycle.
While the sound effects are not much to talk of, the soundtrack is amazing. The music is a superb orchestral pieces, but you can also use your own soundtrack as well.
You may play this from time to time, but it will get dusty in between sessions.
3 - Moderate Immersion. There is nothing the player does but sit and watch things happen around them. If you are afraid of heights, you /may/ get wobbly as you sit atop a mountain spire.
PROS / CONS
- The music is Grade A.
- The night time effects are beautiful.
- It is short.
- The world is kind of boring. You want to see what the "trains" are doing and see the bonfires.
- It just ends instead of letting you sit and continue.
- The hand controls look neat, but bring nothing to the table.
