Yesterday Origins
Discover the latest adventure from Pendulo Studios, creators of the Runaway series! "Yesterday Origins" will take the immortal heroes, John Yesterday and his other half Pauline, not only across the world, but across history itself. This interwoven narration gives the plot its depth and richness. It's 1481. In the dead of night, young John is publically humiliated and dragged through the street. He is imprisoned by the Spanish Inquisition under suspicion of witchcraft. Later, he undergoes an alchemical transformation making him immortal. But something goes wrong, after each resurrection, John completely forgets who he is. In the current day, John is living with Pauline in Paris his immortal partner. They are searching for an artefact that is needed to make the potion again. During their investigation, they will have to face dangerous new protagonists who want to steal their secrets…
Game Discussion
Steam User 5
---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Installed in my heart
☐ Very good
☑ Good - like escape room games
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Very good - pleasing to the eye
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☑ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
---{ Game Time }---
☐ End credits? Just started
☑ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
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☐ 5
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☐ 10
Steam User 2
I played this game back to back with its prequel Yesterday and I was not expecting that I would be so invested in the story.
I also played Blacksad, which makes 3 games from Pendulo Studios that I absolutely loved.
Play these games.
Steam User 0
This game is just alright, maybe even good but very mildly so.
I think that partly(or even fully) thats the fault of me not liking the story, it has good dialogue writing and even decently written characters(like Father Gines) but the main protagonist and the story itself is just eh? Its just not satisfying. First half of the story theres a lot of mystery, and while some may like it, to me it felt like I was in a fog, just doing objectives to progress forward, the narrative was just not that interesting, protagonist himself wasnt that interesting. Idk for a point and click adventure it just doesnt feel like an adventure in many parts, compared to say Broken Sword or Monkey Island etc. Its not a bad story, but prepare for very unconventional story.
As for gameplay, a lot of the time it felt unconventional too, it felt like less of an expanding adventure throughout the world and more of an escape room puzzle where you had 1 overarching goal for the level and you slowly realise how to beat it, Its not bad in my book, it helps it stand out from other p&c adventures and it works for the story it wants to tell, but it does leave levels to feel small which makes overall game feel small and like it ends too fast(ignore my hours, I was 100% achievement hunting n some hours on a menu). Thats a critique of both story and gameplay, it just ends fast and we dont really get a good build up besides Gines villain.
Overall its alright, you can try it when its in deep discount but cant recommend it if you dont like unorthodox storytelling or adventure being too short or too easy
Steam User 0
Super competent game in the Point-and-Click genre. I might go as far as to say that it's Pendulo Studios magnum opus. The story is there. The characters are there. The voice acting is good. The music is on point. As a PnC vet I fully endorse this game.
Steam User 0
Great story and gameplay. The gameplay with looking around a scene, or looking at what characters have on them took a little time to get used to after playing the standard point and click style for so long, but I eventually started to enjoy it. I may be in the minority but I actually hope they keep this gameplay for the next one. I had a few bugs that required an alt+f4 to solve, but it was a minor issue that didn't detract from my enjoyment of the game. The first entry in this series was good, this is an improvement, and I can't wait for the next installment.
Steam User 4
Having just finished this game (after a replay of Yesterday), I am left with far too many things to say and no one to talk about them with. This is a torment. That said, overall the game is quite good and I definitely recommend that anyone who played and enjoyed Yesterday give it a chance.
The big stand-out with this game (and most of Pendulo Studios' games in general) is the story. They always knock the story out of the park, and without spoiling anything, the twists and plot reveals in this game are second-to-none. I literally sat with my hands on my head and my mouth gaping open during the final reveal, which absolutely blew my mind. A++ Pendulo Studios, you did it again!
I only have a few somewhat negative disclaimers to add to this:
The controls and UI changed between Yesterday and this game, and while I usually adapt quickly to such changes, the change was stark enough that there was a bit of a learning curve. The controls are also extremely clunky. Sometimes you know exactly what to do but the game makes it nearly impossible to follow through with this unless you follow the exact steps that it wants you to. It feels a bit like trying to do a math problem where the teacher will only accept one means of getting to the solution even though there are ten. This is not only frustrating, but means that a walkthrough is more or less necessary. Moreover, Yesterday had a hint system. Why was that done away with? It would have helped tremendously?
There is one bug that happened several times, mostly in chapter three, but always made me feel like I was going to go insane: the background music of scenes and characters will overlap, which makes your brain bleed. It doesn't happen that often, but god is it terrible when it does happen.
Finally, and I'm sure most people won't care about this, Pendulo Studios has never had a great track record of putting women into their games and allowing them to be more than damsels in distress. I admit, this game improved dramatically on this point compared to Yesterday. If I am being charitable, then there are six named women to twelve named men. Now that I'm typing that, I realize it doesn't actually sound like that much of an improvement, but it really is. Being able to play as Pauline is fantastic and helps this quite a bit.
That said, there are a number of entirely unnecessary and honestly somewhat sexist moments:
We start the game with a saucy shot of Pauline in the shower, slowly panning up from bottom to top, which was entirely unnecessary.
The fact that Pauline feels the need to kill herself over her wrinkles is honesty horrifying. Given that she praises the same thing in John, coupled with the fact that John doesn't mind his at all, highlights that even more.
Related to the above ^, the fact that Pauline does this by hiding the necessary tools within beauty products also feels entirely unnecessary.
Pauline explicitly comments that John thinks that her body is a baby factory which made me cringe irl. Yikes on bikes.
Some of this can be chalked up to the game being a product of its time, and that's fine, but I hope to see Pendulo Studios doing better in this regard with future games.
Weirdly, I should also mention that this game predicted the way "AI" (what is actually just applied statistics) is used today to the detriment of many a creator. I have no idea how they did it, but they did it.
Steam User 1
I liked the story, but the gameplay did not play nice with MacOS's hot corners.