On Your Tail Review (What A Strange Game)
After 100%ing the game, I only want more to do.
I hope we get more Diana Caproni in the future.
On Your Tail manages to capture the nostalgia of being a tourist on vacation, the feelings of youth after school hours, and the early-2000s era of more experimental and less-polished gaming. It's like a combination of a young adult mystery novel, edutainment point-and-click adventure game, any early-season episode of Murder, She Wrote, and weird middle-shelf games you'd find for 20% off new. I know the intention was to feel like Shenmue, but having no time management makes the inspiration only superficial, and probably for the best too.
This game easily has some of my favorite locations in any game, the amount of artistry it takes to tell you about characters and their relationships/interests while also making everything feel natural is insane. It's easy to use the environment to make a caricature, but for example, Diana's house at the start of the game uses framed photos and quirky details like the chalkboard wall to sell that Diana has loving, caring, parents that want to foster her creativity. So it makes Diana's professor rejecting her work, and her mother discussion with her father about the viability of Diana's dream to become a writer feel only more suffocating. Diana doesn't have to explain her feelings, she's uncertain and anxious, and her leaving to find Borgo Marina off desperation to figure out something about a comforting figure in her life, her grandma, feel justified outside of just a burst of spontaneity. Plus it helps with the idea she's so upset she'd forget her smartphone, which is probably the biggest hand-waive needed for the plot to work completely.
The music is exceptional at being understated. The looping muzak tracks do the job of filling out the atmosphere, while the main theme is this nice dreamlike retro-feeling synth track with that sets you in the mood for "This is going to be like the 80s." It's hard to really talk about the soundtrack without spoilers or just saying "It sets the mood", but I don't regret buying the OST.
The puzzle solving is On Your Tail at its most focused, but also at its best AND worst. The main puzzles are the Deduction puzzles, where there's an incredibly charming board game diorama set up and you have to play the clues you found as cards to try to re-create the events, and there is just a metric ton of ways for every scene to play out.
But the lack of being able to undo a card is the ultimate test in patience, and specifically for the gelato puzzle. Someone made a guide for it, I solved it on my own because I wanted to experience *why* someone would make a guide for that puzzle specifically and Santa Maria it takes so long to retry, and you can't even just be like "Hey Paun, remember what flavor of gelato you had that night?", a single mistake can take minutes to manifest just from the animations alone.
Also I love Chea, she's my favorite of the four main friends, but I think she legitimately is just trolling you with her bag organization requests, She's obtuse in a way that made me question if I was stupid, and the only way to exit the bag sorting is by solving the riddle,. Basically helping Chea is like helping your Dad with car repairs when you were 6 and he asked for a 5/8" ratchet wrench and you have the entire toolbox on your lap like "What the fuuuuuu...." But also introducing the "Pink" jar of jam before the final puzzle where she asked for "One item of each color, each item from same/subsequent shelves" made me have a moment of enlightenment I hope to never experience again.
The non-idealic and kind of shlubby animal people paired with a vibrant Mediterranean setting with an overly saturated color palette all combined is just something that you don't really see anymore. It feels like I'm experiencing something like "Haven: Call of the King" or "Sly Cooper" again. On Your Tail feels like a game from 20 years ago and in the best way possible.
The lack of polish on a project with so much effort and passion put into it is legitimately something we don't see enough of anymore. For example: there's a unique model of a GameBoy placed on a bottom shelf in Dragut Arcade with no indication it's there, and on the opposite side of the room is a punk-rock furry recreation of the Mona Lisa, both of which are assets that are used only once that exist just to add to Cicci and Mucci's personalities (like all the doodles by Cicci on the cork bulletin board, which are also only used once)-- But the game would softlock if you interacted with a computer after buying all the gelato shop upgrades (fixed post release). Honestly, the warts make On Your Tail even more special to me, passion and vision alone can carry you farther than technical skill can on its own. They wanted to make "Shenmue but on Vacation" and instead made "Deadly Premonition without the horrible combat and actual sound mixing". Like. I can not come up with better praise, the game's weird and beautiful in a way I can't quantify besides saying it has "soul".
I don't know, I just kind of rambled for this review. It came out in the middle point between me turning 30 and 31, I just got a raise at my job, reconnected with my family after estranging myself for the last decade, and I'm in the middle of working 9 days in a row as of writing this review (on 3.5hrs of sleep, too. Day 6!), it's a weird mix of finding purpose and community while still having a bunch of uncertainty. I feel like On Your Tail is going to make a lasting impact on my life for at least the next few years just for helping me process my thoughts while also giving me a mini-vacation after work. Also, I don't think I've resonated with a protagonist more than I have with Diana, and I might need to get back into writing and drawing, even as just a hobby.
Also releasing this game in December when the American Midwest dips down to -2F/-18C with windchill is kind of diabolical, forget being nostalgic for childhood, I'm nostalgic for 4 months ago when I didn't need gloves to open my front door.
tl;dr: A rough gem that is going to remain one of my all-time favorites. Very digestible game that touches on heavy topics but with a "life goes on" attitude. Never knew a summertime fling could fill me with existential dread.