Guard Duty is a retro styled point-and-click adventure by Sick Chicken Studios and Ratalaika Games. Find out if this retro – and modern – adventure is worth playing in our Guard Duty review!

 

Tondbert, loyal Guard to the Castle of Wrinklewood has a lot to answer for. Under his watch someone has snuck into the kingdom and kidnapped the princess — an event that will have consequences well into the future.

The game starts with a brief intro cinematic that occurs in 2074. A weird monster and a man are facing off, with a message that there are only 10 seconds left before human extinction. All of a sudden, a gigantic flash appears, and you see the planet sliced in two. After that, you are taken a thousand years earlier to the Kingdom of WrinkleWood with a drunken guard at the kingdom’s gate who lets a man in a dark cape enter. A few scenes later, you’ll learn that the k¿-king’s daughter has been kidnapped, and it is your duty to rescue her!

Guard Duty is played as a traditional point and click adventure, where you move the cursor on the screen with the left analog stick, with highlights becoming visible on points of interest like objects or openings on the roads to leave a scene. When you highlight something, you can interact with it with the X button, and if it’s something you can pick up, it will automatically go into your Infinity Pouch. Your Infinity Pouch will be available from the icon in the top right corner of the screen to access your to-do list for your current objectives and your items. If you select an item, you’ll be able to combine it with points of interest in the scene.

 

When leaving a scene, you’ll be taken to the overworld map where you can select from a few areas to explore. Since the game is the type that has puzzles to solve, if you want to move forward in your quest, you’ll be navigating a lot between places to gather items and go back to another one to use it. As you progress through the game’s acts, different worlds and scenes will be presented, so you’re not always playing in the same few places.

 

The game has some nice pixel art visuals with a lot of funny things to make for a humorous story. It’s also really nice to see that a budget game like this has a fully voiced dialogue throughout the whole game, which was certainly not something I expected from an affordable adventure game on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, thanks to its Cross-Buy nature.

It didn’t take too long after starting the game to see that I would be in for a pleasant ride. Starting with Tondbert, your character, waking up after having too many drinks, with your armor nowhere to be found. Then sometime later trying to leave the kingdom only to be told that you can’t leave if you don’t have the DLC. Don’t worry, as there is nothing to purchase in the game – I’ll leave you to find out what it means when you play. As for the puzzles, they aren’t that complex to solve, and with the help of the to-do list, it shouldn’t be hard to continue in the story.

 

The story will probably take you a couple of hours to complete, which will give you all but one trophy for the platinum. The only trophy that is technically missable is easily obtained at the beginning of the game, so even if you miss it, it won’t take you long to go back for another playthrough to get it – just be sure to interact with all characters on the market and to use a coin on a specific character in the bottom right corner of the screen, and you’ll be set.

Final Thoughts
Guard Duty is a simple yet satisfying point and click adventure. It’s not the most challenging game or one with the most epic storyline, but it will provide enough fun for an evening and two Platinum trophies if you have a Playstation 4 and a PlayStation Vita.

PSN Price: $9.99

Disclaimer
This Guard Duty review is based on a PlayStation 4 copy provided by Ratalaika Games.