When you are looking to travel, you are presented with your location on a globe and every path you've unlocked from that point. The one downside to the stylish yet simplistic presentation was that finding my place on the in-game map was sometimes quite tricky. The further and more broadly you travel, the more you can learn about this world, the politics, the wars, the technology, and perhaps most importantly, the people through his memoirs. It's a delicate mix of maintaining a sense of ownership and agency while not working with a blank slate, and the game ultimately balances the two sides well. You can choose how the story unfolds or alter his perspective on some things, but his character still holds firm throughout.
Everything is written from the perspective of Passepartout's diary explaining the events, and sometimes he'll even make reference to writing those very words.
It was ultimately rewarding, though did make me wonder about previous missed opportunities.ĭespite conveying most of its information in plain text, 80 Days uses its words to paint a vivid picture of a bustling steampunk world where art and fashion mix with wild technologies. The icons are all clear and intuitive and I never felt lost for what to do thanks to this simple introduction, but I did notice that some of the game's later intricacies were left for me to figure out on my own. In the early game, you are eased into the process of selecting and embarking on routes and taught the benefits of items, such as being able to haggle for an earlier departure time thanks to your dapper dress. Keeping him happy and safe is a metric, and while you might come to care for him, it's clear very early on that this is your adventure, not his. The choices are all yours, and Fogg is more something to manage in the background. You quickly discover the great Phileas Fogg, while not necessarily a bad man, is a financier rather than an adventurer. What makes the game interesting are the adventures and stories you'll find along the way. It's in France where you are given your first introduction to story and its branching choices-you can choose to explore or tend to your master, but the main goal is to try to uncover more routes to continue your journey.
Then stretches of paths are presented to you with lines that extend across a globe, though the first one is the brief journey from your starting point in London to the first stop in Paris. You're instructed to pack your bags, giving you a look at the item management system which presents itself in a grid-based format, fitting things into as many suitcases as you can currently afford to carry. Immediately you are introduced to most of the central mechanics. There is no dallying as you are informed through lines of text that your master has taken on quite the wager and you are to travel the globe. Verne named the character after the real-world adventurer Wiliam Perry Fogg, however, as we come to learn in this reimagining perhaps his servant should have been the one to inherit the famous name.
It's a narrative adventure where you take the role of Passepartout, the devoted French manservant of one Phileas Fogg-the character who famously circumnavigated the globe in 80 days in the classic Jules Verne novel descriptively titled Around The World in 80 Days. To venture around the globe on the whim of a wager is an exciting premise, but it is truly the stories you uncover along the way, rather than the end goal that make 80 Days a delight to play.
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