Unusual Findings is a point and click adventure by Epic Llama games. Three friends Vinny, Nick and Tony have to solve what happened after an alien space ship crash lands in their town.

Right from the jump, Unusual Findings is a nostalgia overload that brings the 80’s streaming right back into your living room. Even the main story line is a throwback. Vinny gets grounded by his dad after causing a science experiment to go haywire and explode. The plan is to sneak out with his buddy Nick to go to their friend Tony’s house and watch some scrambled porn with Tony’s descrambler. After it messes up and causes the spaceship to crash, the kids sneak out to go find out what happens. Right off the bat, the alien murders a cop then takes off. The kids now are trying to find out what’s going on and stop the carnage from escalating.

Being a point and click adventure, we are left with three main choices in “look at, talk to or grab” when it comes to an item. The story ties into these by allowing you multiple ways to go about your progress. Your choices determine how people interact with you in the game going forward. While it may be funny to punch a character in the face, it may be more beneficial to simply talk to them. Standard for the genre, there is no HUD or direction on where to go. Players are forced to constantly back track to find items and solve puzzles. It’s up to you to do so, and if you don’t you may end up with hours on end of being in a rut with nowhere to go. Unfortunately, several times during our play through saw glitches halt our progress. Even doing the right thing would see the game provide us dialogue as if we chose the wrong option. Only uninstall/reinstall several times did it finally let us move forward. It really sucked because the story was hysterical and it took away from the immersion. It’s one thing if I can’t figure out a puzzle, but not being able to tell if I’m doing it wrong or if the game was glitched pissed me off.

The jokes were hysterical. To the developer’s credit, they don’t pull any punches. It’s an 80’s game and the jokes are edgy, 80’s humor. One point sees the trio of friends walk up to a van in the park at lover’s lane. As it’s rocking proverbially with some hot action inside, Tony comes out with “Looks like someone took the free candy at the park”. I admit, I laughed so hard. I mean, it’s not every day a pedo joke gets dropped in a video game, but that was damn funny.

Although the story was funny, it has it “What the hell moments?” Shortly after witnessing the alien murder a cop right in front of them and laser beam melting dozens more, they start asking it for help and being nice to it. It threw me for a loop as it doesn’t tie into the story at any point later on. It happened several times. A single time can be a one-off, but it was too forced with the amount of times it occurred and acted as a detriment to the overall story gameplay.

Fortunately, the game sees some redemption from its nostalgia overload. Growing up in the 80’s myself, it brought me back to remembering times with my friends. Some was on the nose. For example, a bunch of Star Wars toys are referred to as Galaxy Wars. Others are not so obvious to those unless you grew up during that time. A mission early on sees you use a “Tom Cruise” cartridge in an 8-bit system. The pixelated graphics clearly make the game to be the NES Top Gun, and I was immediately brought back to when I used to play the game. To this day, I still remember picking the Tiger missiles and being the only one of my friends who could actually land at the end of the missions. Goonies, Pac-Man, Star Wars, Zelda and more are strewn about Unusual Findings. After all, the comic store is called “Emerald Sword” with a logo that is clearly Zelda. The nostalgia saves the game, and fans of the point and click adventure will enjoy it. Basically, Unusual Findings is the game that we thought the Stranger Things video game was going to be. After all, even the title Unusual Findings is synonymous with Stranger Things. That’s the best part of the game, trying to figure out what’s what.

The voice acting in Unusual Findings is incredibly well done and by far the best part of the game. Being a point and click adventure, literally every single item has a comment from the group of friends.  You’ll spend a lot more time than you need to while playing just to see if one of them says something crazy.

All things considered, Unusual Findings still has many strong points as noted. The glitches in progress, however, soured our taste and wasn’t enough to bring Unusual Findings back for us. It may not happen for everyone. It may not happen to you at all. It did, however, happen to us far too often. When all is said and done, Unusual Findings became more of an Abnormal Detection for us.

Unusual Findings is available now on Xbox, PlayStation, PC and Switch