izigame.me

I wish I could give the game a neutral review, with a very slight tendency toward positive.
This seems to be a game designed to play together with your little ones.
If you don't have children, I guess it is perfectly serviceable as a quick, basic adventure for those who find themselves absolutely starved for a P&C game. If you're curious about it yourself, I recommend getting this on sale.
Let's get my major gripes with the game out of the way first:
-While I personally think the visual style is unappealing (like an old flash game), it does have enough detail and charm to not be completely hideous. You'll come across plenty of problems with the layering of characters and environmental objects, which will break what little immersion there is to begin with.
-The characters are not deep or all that interesting (with one particularly weird exception), but distinguishable enough to remember. Most of them not by name though, I just finished the game and can't recall any of the names of the main cast. I simply had no reason to care.
-The puzzles are of standard P&C flavor, use items on things in your environment, occasionally combine them in your inventory and progress through some dialogue to trigger events. The latter aspect could use a LOT of work though:
Don't expect any bizarre and brilliantly written dialogues akin to the majority of Monkey Island games, what you have to deal with here is very basic and has humor which can either be described as childish or mind-numbingly dull.
-Speaking of dialogues, whenever a character has to say more than one line, there's a noticeable delay between the sentences being delivered. I imagine this may be by design, so very young children don't have to process all of it at once, but to me it simply seemed like a "crap factor" I had to adjust to. Made me accidentally skip lines, because I thought they were done talking and I wanted to continue exploring.
-While the game has a feature to point out interactables in a scene, it doesn't always work really well, because some of them are obscured by foreground objects and the player has to move to the corner of the screen to properly see them.
-I feel like there's so much wasted potential. I mean, your main cast consists of time-travelling scientists, who also happen to be a rock band! That premise alone opens up so many crazy and imaginative opportunities, but it doesn't really go anywhere meaningful.
With all these issues being present, what's there to redeem the game?
-This feels like a rather personal project. It felt to me like it gave an insight into the things the devs were personally fond of and the characters might be superficially based on themselves or people they know. I think it's kinda nice to get a little glimpse of that. Shout-out to the reference to the British claymation series The Trapdoor! Good stuff! c:
-It is mostly "family friendly" (but since the writing is quite sloppy, I wouldn't let a very young child play it alone, there are a handful of questionable aspects to it).
-While I played the majority of the game completely stone-faced, there are a small number of actually smart jokes.
-It feels, naturally, very British, which I did find quite enjoyable. Especially the aspect of rock band traveling in a submarine. We all know what this is a reference to! c:
-The devs seem to genuinely care about their game. Even now, many years after it's release, issues posted on the steam forums get addressed immediately! I was unable to finish the game due to a bug, I reported it and two days later the game received an update! Fantastic service!
-While it first seemed that the villain of the story was merely a one-dimensional afterthought, the ending changed that completely. In hindsight, the ending is pretty dark and twisted, which came as an amazing surprise, contrasting the overall flatness of the story. Not only does this open up the opportunity to have a somewhat philosophical discussion, but also the possibility to do so much more with the sequel, should there ever be one! Work on your writing, wait a few years until your current intended audience has matured a little and turn this into a heart-wrenching story coupled with some grey morality, but plenty of "more mature" jokes! Again, so much potential!
While I can't see myself ever playing this game again, it made me curious about the studio's next project, just to see where they improved.