American Arcadia is a strange game. Built around a premise that has been explored more than once, it follows Trevor Hills, an incredibly bog-standard fellow who just happens to be living inside a huge 70’s-themed TV show. In fact, almost everyone he knows is, and none of them know it. But while this premise was fairly well explored out in The Truman Show, American Arcadia gives it a subtly sinister edge: if ratings drop and you’re no longer needed, you get murdered. Simple, tidy, mildly terrifying.
In the opening moments, American Arcadia does a wonderful job of showing just how tedious and routine Trevor’s life is, hammering home that he is nothing but an ineffectual wage-slave. It’s no wonder no one wants to watch him. However, he does have a guardian angel on the outside in the form of Angela Solana, an employee of Walton Media, the company that produces American Arcadia.
As Trevor you must navigate a 2D side-scrolling world, occasionally solving puzzles, doing a little mild platforming, and often running for your life. These sections are stylised and exciting, and it’s easy to get attached to Trevor, nebbish as he undoubtedly is, because he’s just so clueless and affable.
When you switch to Angela you’ll adopt a first-person viewpoint and initially need to solve a camera-based puzzle in order to break into and hack the server room to allow Trevor to escape a couple of hitmen. This introduction to Angela really sells how different their two worlds are, although you won’t get a more thorough understanding of why she’s doing what she’s doing until later.
Occasionally, you’ll need to control both characters at once. It’s fairly rudimentary and doesn’t ask a great deal of you, simply steer Trevor and click on the screen for Angela, but it’s much harder on a controller than it is if you’re on a PC with a mouse and keyboard at your disposal. These sections don’t always feel smooth, especially as Trevor is hardly slick and fluid in his movements, but the difficulty is pretty forgiving.
For the most part, these gameplay sections aren’t really what American Arcadia is about. They’re vehicles for the story more than anything, as at times it feels like the game really has something it wants to say. Sadly, it has kind of been said before, a few times, so there’s nothing overtly revelatory here. Big corporations are heartless bastards? Yup, we know. Ultimately people care more about entertainment than human life? Maybe. I’m not so sure on that one. I mean it’s not like we gather around gladiatorial arenas to watch people murder one another on a Friday night. So once again art imitates life but overdoes the moustache disguise and silly voice.
Still, there’s a lot to like here. American Arcadia is a good-looking game for a start, and the dialogue between the two leads is thoughtful and occasionally funny. Both characters are likeable enough, even if the situations they find themselves in are a little oh-tee-tee. They kind of have to be though for the sake of stakes, and some of the set-pieces are pretty tense. As the game opened I assumed I was in for a point and click type adventure with sinister undertones, so the quick shift in gameplay was appreciated.
American Arcadia may not have a particularly original premise, but it does present recycled ideas in unique packaging, which makes up for a lot of it. While it can feel a little cumbersome at times, and it occasionally struggles to maintain its pace, it’s still an enjoyable adventure in well-realised world.
