Justin Wack and the Big Time Hack Review
Release Date: August 23rd 2022
Developer: Warm Kitten
Platforms: PC (Steam)
Price: $19.99
Having been a huge fan of point and click adventure games, I was more than excited to try out Warm Kitten’s Justin Wack and the Big Time Hack. A whistle stop tour of the storyline would be Justin Wack has just broken up with his girlfriend Julia and, following an accident with some metal and a microwave, ends up stuck in the past. Determined to get back to his own time, Justin must figure out a series of puzzles and travel across different time periods to be reunited with his love.
The gameplay is split across three different time periods: the past, the present and the future. You would assume that this might be difficult to grasp, however, the gameplay does a great job of keeping things simple. Justin - the main protagonist, eventually gains the ability to travel between the past and the future, which is ruled by robots. In the present, we take control of a jolly caveman named Kloot, who has escaped from the past and into the present. Later on in the game, we also take control of different characters, so the gameplay never gets old.
The storytelling is very well done in the game, and all of the characters are nicely developed as the story progresses. When I first met Justin Wack I can’t say I particularly liked the guy - honestly, who gives their significant other an ultimatum of ‘It’s me or the cat’ and wouldn’t expect to be broken up with? However, as the story progresses I found myself liking Justin’s character more and more and by the end of the story I was rooting for Justin and Julia to get back together.
The humour in this game is top-notch. It had me laughing out loud on several occasions. One of my favourites was all of the dinosaurs living vegan lifestyles (at least, until nightfall.) All of the characters are so well written and the voice acting is on point. There are many easter eggs scattered throughout the game, paying homage to extremely popular 2D point and click adventures such as The Secret of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle and this was really nice to see, you feel as though you are part of the inside joke.
The gameplay centres around using items which you find across the different time periods in certain combinations in order to make progress. This is not unlike other point and click games however, if I had to make one complaint about the game it would be that only six inventory items can be viewed at the top right of the screen and this can make it a bit tedious and difficult to combine items. Some of the item combinations and ideas were very clever, and some were rather cryptic. However, the game does offer a hint-system in the game menu should you get stuck. I didn’t make use of this system, however, but it is a welcome addition in my opinion. The game is split into three acts, and overall it took me 22 hours to complete, which is a very decent amount of playtime and worth the cost of the game. The game has a total of 44 trophies and even on my play through I only unlocked 41, so there are still things that I missed!
In summary, this is an absolute gem of a game and if 2D point and click adventures are your kind of thing, you definitely must play this game. The humour, characters, art style and storytelling are top-notch and worth every penny.
Pros:
Great Storytelling
Brilliant Voice-Acting
Decent playtime length
Easy to understand/control
Hilariously funny
Hints system
Cons
Only 6 inventory items can be viewed at any one time