Ophelia Payne

A cozy, hand-drawn indie adventure…yes please.

Finding Polka, developed by Shinnosuke Kumazawa (lidlocks) and published by PARCO GAMES, and its unique, beautiful ballpoint pen art style really caught my eye as something unique that I haven’t seen before. That alone makes this an easy recommendation; finding unique things in gaming isn’t always easy now, but it also helps that Finding Polka also has delightful gameplay and story.

The world of Finding Polka is created from over 300 A4-sized drawings and 100 B4-sized drawings, and almost every person, animal and building is unique. Once I read this stat, I found myself staring at the complex scenes in pure awe.

You play as a girl named Friendy and her adorable wiener dog, Jazz. On one of their walks, they spot a small dog named Polka who looks like a pup she knew as a child. As they try to get a closer look, Polka gets dognapped, and the adventure to find him begins. Flipping between isometric and 2D perspectives, Friendy and Jazz follow Polka as he causes chaos in various environments.

Each level is a combination of gameplay styles. There is a mazelike quality where you must find out how to get from A to B. This will involve some light puzzle solving and switch activations, and even a few fetch quests. Each level will also have some NPCs dotted around that have thought bubbles above their heads showing an item they are searching for. Most of these were quite simple and required very little backtracking.

There are also some minigames scattered throughout, and I loved the unexpected game of whack-a-mole, for example. I liked the variety of these, and with no real fail state, gamers of all levels can find success.

My main critique of the gameplay is that the interactive objects are just a slightly different colour than the main background colour of cream. While this is helpful if you didn’t get close enough to a character to trigger a quest for an item, you may just find it randomly and hold onto it until you find the person who is looking for it. This could be an issue for colourblind gamers, and I would like to see an option to perhaps change that colour in the future.

I loved the softness in the storytelling. Whether it was intended to project feelings of loneliness and loss, I’m not sure, but I found moments where I felt waves of this. Finding Polka has beautiful idle moments if you choose to look for them. Friendy and Jazz will interact, and you can sit on benches to admire artwork. You can also collect real photos of the developer’s dog. A lovely detail, and I loved collecting and seeing them all.

You develop a feeling of community of sorts when you play this game; helping random strangers around the world is a nice little reminder that one person can make a difference in the world too. Whether this was the intention of the devs or not, I’m not sure, but as I played through the game, I felt this way. This is impressive when you are playing a game with no real dialogue between characters other than expressive images or sounds.

There is something special about a game that asks so little of you, just to relax and explore, and Finding Polka is that type of game. We are constantly bombarded by games that expect us to do more, see more, have the biggest maps or the most side quests. Sometimes we just want a chilled-out gaming experience.

Finding Polka is a small game with a simple but impactful story. If you are, or were, a pet owner, you may find it speaks to you a little more. It’s an easy recommendation from me.

Until next time…be good to yourself and be good to each other.

**Special thanks to PR Hound for the review code**