With its unique take on time loops, Orten Was The Case is one of the most bizarre games to play.
Do you remember those challenging puzzle games where you would die instantly just by trying to move? Those days, mainly the 90s, were dark times for people who wanted to get into casual PC gaming but ended up ditching it because visual adventures and point-and-click puzzle games were quite hard to decipher. Without a guide or any direction to take, most people were confused about what their first move should be, then ultimately ending the story crudely.
Nowadays, those types of games are rare to come by, but you still experience the old ones by emulating or purchasing re-releases through streaming services. Some other developers, however, take responsibility and try to bring those titles back to the mainstream by making them more user-friendly. Orten Was The Case is surely one of them, but you can still expect to be confused about what to do once you get in the shoes of our protagonist, Ziggy. Or, don’t get into his shoes because he prefers to stay barefoot throughout the game.
The story of Orten Was The Case is complex to catch on unless you check the Steam page. Despite the odd nature and lack of superpowers, Ziggy has to stop an imminent nuclear explosion that is destined to wipe out the earth, and surprisingly it also includes the little town where he lives: Orten. He wakes up remembering absolutely nothing, and by investigating people around him, you start to remember what exactly happened to Ziggy. Initially, the game gives you around 12 minutes to sort everything out, but 12 minutes is quite a short while. How can a basic Swedish man from a Swedish suburb be supposed to save humanity?
Before talking about the Orten Was The Case’s gameplay, characters, and setting, I must say that I chatted with my Swedish friends about the game; they didn’t know about it, but seeing it represented like Orten surprised them. I am not angry; I am just surprised that some parts of Sweden can look like Orten. By the way, Orten apparently means “suburb” in Swedish slang, which is a nice touch by the developers. More Swedish-related nods and bits will appear in the review as I go along; no worries.
First things first, you have to remember who you were and what you were doing as Ziggy. He wakes up and looks around in his flat- which is just an empty bus but still. You can take notes and save them in your notebook by interacting with objects around you. These can help if you are stuck gathering information, such as passwords or physical appearances of people of Orten. The initial mission is to find your friend in Orten and help her; this is where your approach to solutions can differ.
In my first playthrough, I tried to sneak through some apartment buildings to reach my friend, and once I met up with her, she led the way to a room and helped her sell some sort of herb to a client. This is where the game automatically saves; however, this puzzle game has a way of teaching you that as you keep solving more puzzles, it helps you reach the conclusion faster. Time loop, something I rarely come across with games, is a very nice mechanic that is hard to get used to, but once you figure it out, the rest follows quite conveniently.
Instead of jumping through certain households to reach your friend, you can start the loop once again, where you wake up in your flat. This time, you decide to look around and find a construction worker who will give you the door code once you bring him his nails. After finding and giving the nails, you follow him to a point where he has to spill the code of the apartment. Learning the code lets you keep it during the simulation, so restarting and entering the loop allows you to reach your friends’ location easily.
Orten Was The Case becomes a huge puzzle game where you need to find clues and add them together to find out what is going on and how to stop the mess. Besides critical thinking and tying other ends, the game doesn’t provide much in the sense of interactive gameplay. But I must say, as you keep looking for items and getting requests done, the places you can reach in Orten get bigger and bigger. From outside, there is the main street and road to Woodhill, a small village, but once you discover the rooftops and secret tunnels, Orten stops being an ordinary little suburb.
I like how every element of Orten Was The Case’s story is fused into your actions, as there are more than two ways to accomplish a goal. You can see the timeline of the events through your information tab and start building a route on what to do next. Figuring out the order of events honestly gives you confidence, and putting them to work makes you feel better about yourself. Although the story might be interesting, the whole solving the mystery of Ziggy, the narrative is somewhat middling. Understanding what is happening around you is easy to read, but guiding the player to the next point becomes a bit tedious to follow what the game asks you to do.
Orten Was The Case is not as cruel as you think it is. The game provides you with a difficulty slider, and it’s arranged to reflect how many clues you’d like to see during your investigation and tie the events together. So, if you have never played a puzzle game in the shape of Orten Was The Case before, the developers welcome you for being interested in the title. Changing to the easy difficulty lets you track every single important event. It hints at what to do next, while the bare minimum difficulty strips down everything that can be considered a reference to progress.
Visually, the gritty elements of a lost yet somewhat alive suburban area in Sweden are nicely presented, even though some might call it exaggerating the concept. I also especially loved how the ambient soundtrack in the background sounds exceptionally good. The soundtrack is dynamic, and it changes once you arrive in a different part of Orten; important events are also accompanied by music that makes you feel your bones, too, which is quite nice. There are moments when you just sit and admire Orten’s noisy image, and it feels charming rather than disturbing.
NPCs in Orten Was The Case scattered around the Orten can showcase the harsh sides of human life as almost all of them have a distinct look from each other. A nice touch is that every single character is voiced with a few lines, but they are all in Swedish. Knowing some Swedish to a degree made me smile when a character randomly pulled out a sentence I would never expect them to, which was one of the many entertaining parts of Orten Was The Case.
While Orten Was The Case is an impressive and unique title by today’s standards, it does some things wrong, too. Do not get me wrong, these wrongdoings are not the way that would absolutely demolish the interest of checking out the game. It is just some minor things that you would eventually find against your gameplay.
For example, Ziggy’s movements are not always fluid. He tends to hang or jump onto certain places without you wanting to. I assume navigating through a 2D environment as a 3D character does all the confusion, as you cannot pinpoint where you are exactly. The other thing that might get annoying very soon is Ziggy’s need to interact with stuff you did not ask him to. You might find yourself going down the ladder instead of talking to one of the residents of Orten.
Finding out what to do next can sometimes be vague, as Orten Was The Case rarely guides you on where to go next. I know it’s keeping up the spirit of the old-style puzzle games, but most people avoided playing that genre because of how unwelcoming it was to the new players. The title’s premise starts becoming clear once you find out the extra bit of info being spread around, but there is no incentive to do those without letting players know about it. There is also the factor of restarting the loop, which might put players into a vicious cycle of restarting and finding out nothing.
Orten Was The Case is a highly well-thought title with lots of never-seen artistic choices. It is undoubtedly one of the indie games of the year that leans to the better side with its visual representation, sound quality, impressive puzzles, and take on the time loop style of gameplay. If you consider yourself a veteran of ’90s story-ridden puzzle games, you could easily eat up Orten Was The Case, but if you are curious to check out the game, approach it with a pinch of salt.
