Jeremy Gallen's Game Reviews

What a BROK!

Independent video game studios would arise after the turn of the millennium as a result of mainstream developers churning out shovelware title after shovelware title for fun and profit that the ignorant gaming masses would eat up regardless of their quality, and generally caring far more about the quantity of games on the market as opposed to quality, given the bugginess and serious problems of even the better-received, loosely termed "masterpieces" polluting the market. French studio COWCAT Games would develop and publish the anthropomorph-studded BROK the InvestiGator in 2022, with its initial release on Windows-based gaming services, but this would extend to others during the following years. Whiles furries are sure to eat it up, is the game actually any good?

BROK opens with the eponymous protagonist, of course an alligator of the anthropomorphic kind, who lives in a dystopian future where humans have gone extinct, replaced mostly by anthropomorphs and robots, with the general population suffering under rampant air pollution, and privileged citizens living under a dome protected from said aerial contamination. Brok, a former championship boxer, is haunted by the death of his wife Lia, whose feline stepson Graff he takes care of in a basement apartment. Throughout the game, the alligator detective will investigate a series of cases that may or may not connect with his spouse's demise.

The anthropomorphic cast will naturally appeal to furries, and fortunately, the narrative itself actually has countless things going for it. These include the fact that pretty much every character Brok chances has some kind of backstory behind them, with all this never forced down the player's throat, more so because of the skippable text. There are, however, a few derivative elements such as the dystopian future and time travel, maybe a few small grammar errors, questionable writing decisions like the animal characters referring to themselves as humans, and some unusual names such as a kangaroo police officer named Sin. Even so, the plot is solid overall.

Adult Mutant Gangster Rodents

BROK plays like a traditional point-and-click adventure and features elements from sidescrolling action beat-'em-up games and RPGs, with the player having a choice of difficulty when starting a new game that affects the difficulty of combat and whether players can get clues from triangular QR code-like items called Ads. Battles are triggered at key moments when the player is advancing throughout the game, with combat having a limited area and Brok able to move around to execute various beat-'em-up moves against his adversaries, including various kinds of standard attacks and a special attack.

The deaths of enemies leave behind coins that Brok can pick up, although they disappear after the player goes long enough without collecting them, which can be annoying especially If foes are still trying to kill him. On the lowest difficulty, enemies begin blinking when they're about to perform a powerful attack, which is a really nifty feature. Completing a battle earns Brok experience for occasional leveling, when the player can increase his health, attack power, or special ability strength, and he recovers all his health. Overall, the battle mechanics work well.

Control in BROK has many things going for it, like the skippable scenes, accurate game clock, the ability to record progress mostly anywhere and anytime, skippable text, the mentioned Ads to get puzzle hints, autosaving, and the ability to bring up inspectable elements of the current environment with a button. There are some issues, however, like the fact that it took me some time to figure out exactly what the Ads were for in the first place, but even with them and on the easiest difficulty, there were a few times where I ran out of them, and I constantly felt stupid at not being able to figure out the puzzles without using a guide. A few glitches abound as well, but even so, things could have been far worse in how the game interacts with players and vice versa.

The soundtrack has a lot of great tunes such as the opening logos / title screen music, which serves as the central theme as well. The music never sounds out of place, although many tracks are a bit too ambient, with tons of silent moments as well. The voice acting, moreover, is a mixed bag, but the voices fit the characters; while some of the performances sound clever, like the rats, or Squealers as they're dubbed in the game, sounding like stereotypical New Yorkers, many characters sound fairly irritating. Regardless, the sound helps more than hurts.

"Hmm, that floating magnifying glass with 'Screen' floating above it...should I take it?"

The creators opted for a classic Saturday morning cartoon appearance, and largely pulls it off well. The colors are bright and vibrant, with smooth, well-animated character sprites who never seem out of place in their dystopian environs. During story scenes, the conversing character portraits appear like they're popping out of holes, having lip movement and animation when talking, but their respective sprites stay absolutely still. The collision detection is also frequently poor, but otherwise, the visuals do their job nicely.

Finally, one can blaze through BROK in as little as eight hours, although there's plenty of lasting appeal in the form of achievements, in- and out-of-game; unlocking all the various Game Overs, official and fan-created artwork of the dramatis personae, and musical tracks; collecting Ads; and filling all the plot branches, with a map depicting this once the player completes the game at least once. The only major hiccup is that finding all this could potentially necessitate a guide.

In summation, BROK the InvestiGator is a great game for both furries and non-furries alike, given its solid combat mechanics, some decent puzzles, enjoyable narrative, nice music, pretty visual direction, and excellent lasting appeal. However, it does have issues regarding the needlessly-difficult puzzles (and despite the Ads, I constantly ran out and had to go on the internet) and guide-dang-it moments, the derivative parts of the storyline, and some negligible issues surrounding the sight and sound. Regardless, it has great appeal across the gaming populace given its fusion of point-and-click games and RPGs, and I hope COWCAT comes up with other fun games in the future.

This review is based on a playthrough of the digital Steam version purchased by the reviewer and played with one of the bad endings and canon ending achieved, along with 8/29 Achievements.