Imagine this, you’re a smol tiny robot, stressed because you’ve lost your friend and the world continuously throws puzzles at you to decipher. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, after the Great War, humans have vanished, leaving Delta the service bot, as well as funky humanoid lizards, to navigate the fallout.
Life of Delta: Puzzling Similarities
Set in a 2.5D gamescape, Life of Delta is a challenging and wonderous point-and-click puzzle adventure. Delta is a sweet-natured service robot whose journey sees him traverse through the desert, city, and even prison! His mission is to find Joe, his missing friend while meeting robots that need help for a variety of quirky reasons. Through a range of interesting puzzles, we help the big and small, the mighty and the shy, all to get even an inch closer to finding our pal Joe.
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My first thought after booting up Life of Delta was that it was reminiscent of Stray, the adorable story of a cat lost in a cybercity. Stray also had friendly (and not so friendly) robots that you interact with and chat with.
The robots in Life of Delta, with their stiff movements and gibberish speech, provided a sense of familiarality. But in saying that the two games aren’t competing, they’re both brilliant in their own right.
Grey Skies and Junkyards – Visuals
Moving through the game and visiting all the locations was a beautiful sight to behold. The landscape designs and colour pallet goes together like rust on metal. It’s not too in-your-face, really allowing players to avoid overstimulations with loud and bright colours.
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The art style is almost paper-like, seamlessly melding together to create the 2.5 scroller that is visually appealing. Paired with the atmospheric lo-fi tunes, Life of Delta became something I looked forward to turning on and playing.
You control Delta by tapping along the ground, not directly controlling with the joystick. To interact with characters or items, you move your identifying dot around the scene until it lands on something for you to interact with. You can also interact with the many other characters in the game, some throwing a new challenges in our direction.
Brain Tickling Fun
The puzzles come strong and fast, and they’re not for the faint of heart. These puzzles are what I would describe as ‘big bois’ and need brain power to complete. I believe the game might be easier on PC, as some of the puzzles require quick movements and precision, which using the controller can’t always provide.
I recommend turning down the cursor sensitivity for my fellow controller users. This allowed me to achieve more accuracy in time-sensitive puzzles.
It isn’t a long game, but rather the sort of title you can spend as little or as much time as you like on. Some puzzles I finished the first time, and others I continuously worked at to crack. A good balance of difficulty was offered amongst all the puzzles which is appreciated as I wouldn’t have the stamina to be battling tough puzzles every time. Sometimes you need the small wins, you feel?
There are over 50 puzzles in Life of Delta, ranging from building spaceship engines and mixing toxic potions to luring dogs away from cats! There’s plenty of variety, with some of them far more challenging than others.
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The strange part about the puzzles was that they come with no explanation, forcing me to to figure out what was needed and then do the problem solving.
My favourite puzzles were of the stealth variety, a few where you had to collect and move items while trying to not be spotted by the baddies. These got my excitement up, especially while venturing into the open and trying not to be spotted. It took quick thinking to get past these points.
Trophies are awarded to players along the way. I’m not a trophy hunter in the slightest, so having clear-cut trophies awarded alongside plot advances was just a nice touch. Unfortunately, there’s no Platinum Trophy for this game.
Finishing the Journey
I very much enjoyed Life of Delta. It’s a wonderful, simple and inspiring journey of a little guy who just wants to find his friend. The world is wonderfully crafted, mysterious and a joy to explore.
I would recommend this title for a quick play, great for downtime between those action games you have stuck in your backlog.
Life of Delta is available now on PlayStation, Steam, Xbox and Nintendo Switch.
Quest Daily scores Life of Delta:
8/10
Quest Daily was supplied a review copy of Life of Delta with thanks to the publisher.
