On Your Tail review

A charming seaside vacation getaway leads to lots of cozy anthropomorphic animal mischief and mystery

Are you like me, and could really do with a vacation to a quiet, peaceful beach town, but don’t have the time or money to do so? Fret not, because Memorable Games are here to whisk you away to a sleepy Italian seaside village, albeit the virtual version and they’re going to make you work for it. In the cozy and charming On Your Tail, we follow a spunky young woman whose search for inspiration becomes an unexpected and life-changing adventure, filled with adorable anthropomorphic animal characters, countless minigames, and of course a bunch of mysteries.

Diana Caproni is a purple-haired goat-girl, literature student and typical overachiever. When she isn’t chasing "A"s, she fills her days with part-time work, sports and hobbies, not to mention honing her skills for the writing contest she dreams of winning. Still living a sheltered life at home with her parents in Turin, she is one day confronted by her professor, who claims that although her writing is technically good and correctly structured, her lack of inspiration and experience is prevalent. To make matters worse, she overhears a conversation between her parents, who are worried that she doesn’t have realistic plans for her future. In a fit of anger, she leaves without saying goodbye, and takes off on her Vespa to seek adventure.

After driving for hours, Diana arrives at her destination, a small coastal village her beloved grandma Sara used to visit called Borgo Marina. A violent storm breaks out just as she enters the town, causing her to crash her Vespa, and just before passing out she sees a mysterious figure running away. When Diana awakens, she discovers that she has been taken in by an elderly couple who were the victims of a recent home invasion. As soon as Diana recovers, she takes it upon herself to solve the crime, both as a token of gratitude, and to get her mind on something other than her situation at home.

In daylight, Borgo Marina is a beautiful, picturesque seaside village, with all the charm and beauty you would expect of a Ligurian Cinque Terre-like town. With pastel-coloured houses and a stunning ocean view, this sleepy town offers everything Diana should need to unwind and relax, but it soon becomes evident that not everything is as it seems. Along with similar break-ins of late, she discovers that Borgo Marina is plagued by a whole string of various misdeeds, such as arson and a missing persons case. Obviously, Diana sets out to figure out what is really going on here.

Naturally, solving such intricate mysteries isn’t done in a heartbeat, so Diana must find a place to live and get comfortable during her stay, and since living here ain’t cheap, she needs to find some work too. The inhabitants of Borgo Marina are mostly friendly and welcoming, and soon Diana finds herself delivering mail, waitressing and serving up gelato in order to earn a living. Making friends comes easy for her, and you can choose if you want to befriend or even romance some of the characters, although it doesn’t really affect the story if you choose to do so.

Now, you might think, “okay, this sounds cute, but what do you actually do as far as gameplay goes?” Well, what don’t you do? There are the mystery deductions, which make the main story progress and lead Diana closer to the truth. But in between are any number of diversions. I mentioned Diana’s odd jobs, which you have to play out in fun little minigames. Lastly, there are a ton of other activities to do, some of them important to the story, but most of them serving as simple pastime ventures. You can cook different dishes in Diana’s apartment, skip stones and play with marbles at the beach, sort out the local mechanic’s toolbox, fish, play at the arcade, learn to paint from a local artist… The list of activities is almost endless.

Some minigames only require you to press a button quick enough, like a Quick Time Event, but others have their own distinct mechanics and most of them are really fun. For instance, the cooking sequence is pretty much what you’d expect, as you chop, stir and plate dishes by correctly and timely pressing buttons. When Diana works as a waitress, she runs between the tables like in a restaurant management game; when cleaning up a toolbox, it is more like a deduction puzzle where you need to place various tools in the right places based on location clues; and when helping out the local post office, Diana must locate addresses aided by street signs and her map.

In addition to the minigames, you’ll collect cards throughout the whole game. Anything of significance that you see or find is presented on a playing card, including characters, activities, locations and clues. These are more than mere collectibles, as Diana can visit her “mind palace” to look at all these cards, as well as do her deductions when the time comes.

In order to investigate more efficiently, Diana has a special tool up her sleeve, a unique device called a chronolens that she inherited from her nonna Sara. This magical trinket allows her to see how a place looked in the near past, making it useful when examining a crime scene, almost like a “spot the difference”-like puzzle. With the clues collected from her investigations, Diana must make deductions, which are set up like a 3D board game, on which you need to place your cards in the correct sequence, and see the characters recreate their actions on the board.

If you get the sequence right, Diana can deduce accurately and the story moves on, but if not, you have to keep on trying until you get it right. If you fail, you get to see which cards are placed appropriately and which are not, so it’s a bit easier to get the solution right the next try, but some of the deductions can be quite difficult. Especially in the later stages of the game, when there are several cards that need to be placed, even with a hint system where you get to see which card goes in what order. The hints are also game cards, and can be earned throughout Borgo Marina, but they are also used as currency in a shop, so you might not have that many of them handy at all times.

On Your Tail

Genre:	Mystery, Science Fiction
Presentation:	Realtime 3D
Theme:	Crime solving, Animal
Perspective:	Third-Person
Gameplay:	Investigative, Deduction
Control:	Direct Control
Graphic Style:	Simulated realism

During her first days in this new village, Diana can’t pick up items, asking “Where do I put it, my pocket?” in a playful nod to other games where ladders and bolt cutters alike are magically stored in some invisible compartment. After purchasing a tote bag, though, she can collect various items such as fresh basil or lemons to use for cooking. There aren’t any inventory puzzles or fetch quests in the traditional sense, but you can buy lots of stuff both for Diana and her apartment, such as outfits, plants, books and other decorative items to make her stay feel a little bit more like home.

Borgo Marina’s inhabitants are a colourful and varied cast of anthropomorphic animals. Many of them you’ll interact with often, but most you only meet once, usually by knocking on their front door or in passing on the street. Each has their own highly distinct personality, such as the surly, slightly overweight cat police officer, the mayor who is a friendly and teeny tiny hamster, and the matronly ram who runs the local trattoria, just to mention a few.

Diana acquires a map to help navigate the town’s charming streets and squares, which also keeps track of objectives, characters and mini-quests. However, it is still a bit tricky to find your way around in the beginning, before you get familiar with the many narrow alleyways and shortcuts. For someone with a poor sense of direction (me), without any indication of where north is, I made several wrong turns before I learned Borgo Marina’s intricate geography.

No matter how much I love walking around charming Italian villages, one thing that becomes tedious quite quickly is that there is no fast travel, so if you have to get from one part of town to the other, you have to walk all the way there. Although Diana can speed up a bit to a run, it’s still a lengthy trek when she needs to get to the other side of Borgo Marina.

On Your Tail is rendered in full 3D, and if you play with a game controller, as is recommended, you can spin the camera 360 degrees if you want to look around. Hotspots are clearly signified with a white dot, and you are free to explore Borgo Marina however and wherever you like. Presented in an adorable cartoony graphical style, I was amazed at how beautiful and detailed this game is, not only in the large and colourful cast, but the surroundings as well. Take time to look around and you can admire the ivy and wisteria on stone walls flowing in the wind, the waves crashing in on the beach, and seagulls flying around in the background, really making the scenery come alive.

Not only will you see the ocean and gulls, but you’ll hear them too, as the soundscape really makes this scenic summer vacation spot even more realistic. Should you go further into Borgo Marina, you can hear ambient small-town noises, such as people chattering, smaller birds chirping and a church bell going off now and then. The music, too, is absolutely wonderful. From the fun and cute 80s-inspired theme song to Italian pop ballads playing on the radio, not to mention the dreamy summer tunes in the background, the soundtrack completes the holiday vibes of On Your Tail, making it perfectly possible to close your eyes and pretend it’s you who’s actually far away in a sleepy seaside village.

There is basically no voice acting, though, as conversations are constructed like visual novels, where you see a static image of the character talking, the dialogue written out in a dialogue box, and the only sounds they make are expressive noises like “eeeeh??”, “ha-ha” and “ooooooh.” While you get to choose dialogue options like in any visual novel, here it’s almost like you’re playing a card game in which you select what to say by playing a card in your hand. These cards are not collected with the others around Borgo Marina; they are just used in conversation as a fun way to depict dialogue options. You can sometimes decide how Diana should respond to different situations, whether you want her to be rude, direct, flirty or polite, but what you pick doesn’t really affect the outcome of the story.

Although the storyline itself is pretty much linear, it isn’t always made clear which quests will make the story progress, so you may eventually end up doing all or at least most of them at some point. Side missions can include just about anything: hanging out with one of your new friends in Borgo Marina, working at a local farm, making enough money to buy an item, or taking your boat out to sea to explore or do some fishing.

Now, all this is literally fun and games, but the main story does tend to disappear a bit in between all the chores and side quests. There were times when I really wanted to progress and unveil more of the story, but couldn’t because I had to buy some item, for instance, and to be able to afford it I had to put in a certain amount of work. Other times I had to do specific activities with other characters before the narrative would naturally move forward; things like skipping stones or eating dinner together, which served as nothing more than activities to boost Diana’s relationship with the respective characters. However, when I embraced the laid-back rhythm, it was easier to immerse myself in the game’s 20 or so hours of cozy life-sim gameplay.

Final Verdict

It's not difficult to charm me with an Italian backdrop, but On Your Tail is so thoroughly cute and delightful that I found myself entertained for hours with its adorable protagonist and the many different minigames you can engage in. While the main story occasionally gets lost in the shuffle of all the side activities available, it eventually does advance at its own pace and I was completely caught off guard by a surprising turn at the end. It will leave you feeling more like a summer visitor than a full-fledged investigator, but I already miss the picturesque town of Borgo Marina, and just thinking about On Your Tail makes me painfully aware that I am in dire need of a vacation.

Aurora played On Your Tail on PC using a review code provided by the game's publisher.