Tourist Trap review

• Reviews by Johnny Nys
• Published:

You wouldn’t want to get stuck living there, but it’s a fun getaway for a short, easygoing vacation that’s over all too soon

I rarely remember my dreams, but when I do, they certainly aren’t as surreal as the ones experienced by Lucas, the protagonist of Tourist Trap, the debut game from Uruguay-based developer Tragico Media. But no wonder Lucas’s dreams are pretty far out there, since his waking life can’t exactly be called normal either. Lucas is a teenage boy who wears shorts and a silly cap but lives in an “open house,” which basically works as a zoo. One wall of his home is a huge window through which a crowd of people watch his every move day in and day out. It’s a peculiar deal his family had to make in their South American coastal town of Santa Ballena, which immediately sets the tone for this short and extremely goofy cartoon adventure that will frequently amuse and occasionally alarm you with its darker, clever layers as well.

After waking up from another doozy of a dream featuring a talking yet decaying whale on a beach, Lucas first has to figure out how to open the front door of his house so he can leave for work. Said door is equipped with a coin slot, and his parents – who for some reason (probably shame) wear paper bags over their heads – have to pay to unlock it for a few hours. Why they live there, exactly, isn’t explained until near the end of the game, so I’ll just say this is not the only strange thing going on in Santa Ballena, as before long Lucas will be dragged into a quest to uncover a huge conspiracy involving some disappearances.

Lucas works as a tourist guide for the Pharos Corporation, which has turned Santa Ballena into a prosperous resort – or so it seems. Everything and everyone in town is connected to Pharos: it’s not only the number one employer, it also provides everyone with household products; almost everything you see bears the Pharos logo. On his way to the airport to pick up that day’s group of tourists, however, Lucas encounters a talking monkey who tells a whole different story regarding the motivation behind Pharos and its hold on the town. It’s not all sunshine and sandy beaches, according to the monkey, because Pharos has a more sinister agenda as well. If Lucas is willing to help, supposedly there’s one mysterious tourist who might be able to aid them in uncovering those secrets: Frank.

But before they can start tracking down the mysterious Frank, Lucas needs to acquire some clothes for the monkey so he can disguise himself as yet another tourist and stay under the radar. After all, a talking monkey isn’t exactly normal. He also has quite the negative opinion on his surroundings, in contrast to Lucas’s more cheerful attitude. Getting those clothes is only one of several fetch quests you will have to face in Tourist Trap. You will encounter many different characters in your travels, and almost all of them will have something useful for Lucas. Then it’s up to you to figure out what they might want to trade it for. And if they still say you can’t have it, there might be a way to steal it from under their nose.

A couple puzzles take some ingenuity to solve, but there are never any really difficult obstacles to overcome thanks to certain design decisions that lower the difficulty level. Like in many games, Lucas will discard any inventory item when he’s done with it, which means you will only ever carry a handful of objects here. The game also has a forced linearity to it. As you progress, several times you won’t be able to return to previous locations. You will travel from Lucas’s home to his neighborhood street, then to the beach area, the theater district, take a short trip on a luxury yacht and finally end up on an island with a lighthouse. Even when there’s no obvious reason why you can’t go back – like when you can’t get through the theater front doors and decide to take a back alley – there’s just no exit to take you there anymore. This means you will always only have a handful of screens to explore and try out puzzle solutions.

There were two instances where I didn’t immediately know where to use a particular item, or how to get my hands on one, but these limited options are a big reason why it took me only two hours to complete the game. I also thought it was a shame that I couldn’t go back to try out other inventory items for funny responses, seek out hidden achievements or even talk to characters I’d met previously. Once I realized this, I made sure to fully exhaust all dialogue trees before choosing the option I thought would probably progress the story; I think I missed some funny stuff in the earlier conversations. And since there are no manual saves – rather a very handy save-on-exit function – I couldn’t go back to experiment without starting a new game (which would then overwrite my save file, of course!).

Tourist Trap has a one-click interface with a crosshair cursor that starts blinking as soon as you hover over a hotspot, which is then also labeled. Clicking on one either gives you a description or adds an item to your inventory if it can be picked up. There are a fair number of hotspots to discover, but there could have been even more, if only to make Santa Ballena slightly more interactive and to include some extra funny responses from either Lucas or his companion monkey friend. The latter also works as a mini hint system: click on him and he will give his opinion on your immediate surroundings, and in some instances he will recommend a particular course of action, or give a subtle suggestion that perhaps there’s something you’re missing. In the end, though, this wasn’t any real help to me, since anything potentially useful he had to say I had already figured out. But I never neglected to click on him regularly, since the monkey really is a funny sidekick – and eventually his reason for being there is very creatively explained, I might add.

Sometimes a puzzle solution might turn out completely different than you anticipated. This is a cartoon adventure, after all, and as such it’s definitely good for a couple of loud laughs. Especially when Lucas misinterprets your directions and does something completely unexpected but likewise effective. For instance, when he leaves his home he’s blocked by a reporter. She’s coughing, most likely allergic to Lucas’s deodorant, so you may decide to use it again to get rid of her definitively. Well, let’s just say Lucas indeed uses the spray can, but in a far more aggressive fashion than you probably intended. In another situation, he might follow your lead to the letter, yet fail miserably in what he’s supposed to achieve, only to find that it still has the desired effect by an unexpected reaction from the NPC, such as when he tries to lure away a couple of security guards.

Tourist Trap

Genre:	Comedy, Mystery
Presentation:	2D or 2.5D
Theme:	Conspiracy, Political
Perspective:	Third-Person
Gameplay:	Puzzle, Quest
Control:	Point-and-click
Game Length:	Short (1-5 hours)
Difficulty:	Low
Graphic Style:	Cartoon

There are several good puzzle-related jokes to be found, the first one very early on. This immediately raised the bar pretty high for the humor in Tourist Trap, and I desired more of that than I eventually received. But perhaps that shows the developers’ restraint; going overboard with the comedy slapstick might have done more harm than good, so they tried very much to limit the humor to smaller doses, which works very well here. The rare instance where something over-the-top does occur is extra funny because it’s so surprising.

A different element I found funny is a much bolder choice and will perhaps be frowned upon by some gamers. Tourist Trap isn’t voiced, but technically it kind of is. Voice-overs are limited to sounds like bla-bla-bla, or mumbling, or snickering, or meeping, or whatever sound the characters might make, which is where that sense of humor rises up again. Even when producing nothing but nonsense words, each character still has a unique “voice” totally fitting their personality that makes it a delight to listen to.

There’s a young rapper trying to win a talent contest who really sounds as if he’s rapping some lyrics; you can almost see the flow of the notes. There’s a dictatorial chef who bla-bla’s in a heavy French accent, a talking parrot bwark-bwarking the way we would all imitate one, a surfer boy mumbling in a Californian drawl, a red carpet diva emoting in that stereotypical teen girl whine, and so many more that really show me how creative you can be if you want to avoid the costs of professional voice acting but still want to add flavor to your game.

The beauty of this is that, other than the sounds very rarely being cut off a bit early – which might have something to do with the fact that I set the subtitle speed to “fast” – it never really becomes annoying. At least not to me; on the contrary, time and time again I had to laugh at the way a newly discovered character sounded, and how poignant their “speech” actually was. I enjoyed these dialogues so much, in fact, that I was willing to turn a blind eye to the occasional typo in the text, to which I’m usually very sensitive. And if you do find yourself irritated by these non-voices, fear not, as you can always completely turn down the voice volume and play by subtitles alone.

Santa Ballena and its inhabitants are hand-drawn and in a colorful 2D cartoon art style with a soundscape that feels very energetic. Round-the-clock ambient effects make you believe the town is bigger than it appears, with birds tweeting somewhere above your screen, crowd noises to the sides, and cars driving by behind you. You never actually SEE them, but they add to the credibility of this fictional world. The funky music, sometimes a bit jazzy, sometimes a bit reggae, fits the whimsical aesthetic – a combination that almost gives it a Tex Avery screwball animation vibe.

As you explore, your main objective is to discover the strange events going on in Santa Ballena. This even factors into the user interface and gameplay, because there’s a slight difference from regular point-and-click adventure games in how you impact the story. While you directly control Lucas for the majority of Tourist Trap, you also seem to be a person in the crowd watching Lucas through the glass in his open house – a visiting tourist, if you will, who is acknowledged by Lucas himself.

Through dialogue choices, not only can you make Lucas talk to other characters, sometimes you can even converse with Lucas himself and give him advice. This often leads to hilarious exchanges. Different dialogue options convey different tones you can use. For instance, at times you can be either passive-aggressively sarcastic, or you can be directly insulting, or you can be neutrally naive. Of course, you could always interpret these situations as Lucas actually talking to himself.

While this could be considered a bit gimmicky, I immensely enjoyed this take on breaking the fourth wall. Instead of trying to play the game as the main character, I tried to play it as my real self, guiding Lucas along in a kind of buddy movie. I was disappointed this isn’t expanded throughout the entire game, though, as you can only enjoy it at fixed points in the script. It’s prevalent at the start of the game, but then at one point I realized it had disappeared from the conversations, though it does occasionally return here and there.

Eventually, Tourist Trap offers an explanation for these sequences, which will probably divide players into two groups, similar to how some of Ron Gilbert’s game endings do. Without spoiling anything, the endgame promises to challenge your perception once again and resume the surrealistic tone first introduced through Lucas’s opening dream sequence. I admit the final location in the game took some adjusting on my end, but when I accepted what was going on, it all started to fall into place.

Final Verdict

Tucked between an abundance of fetch quests and peculiar conversations with unusual characters, in essence Tourist Trap is a game about gaming, about escaping everyday life and playing as someone else, pretending to be a character in a story, basically becoming – for a short time – a tourist in a different world. While I do wish there had been more influence from player choice in the game’s finale, maybe even offering alternate endings that way, I was nevertheless left with a satisfied feeling when the credits rolled. It’s a fun game with a good sense of humor and an interesting story, and though it’s short and fairly basic, it does well what it set out to do. Including making me wary of where to go for our next summer vacation.…

Johnny played Tourist Trap on PC using a review code provided by the game’s publisher. 

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