To be honest, it's been a long time since I wrote something seriously for a mobile game. I was wandering around the game forum today and accidentally saw someone mentioning "Street", which suddenly brought back a lot of memories. I'm not going to brag about it, but in my mind this game has been a breath of fresh air in mobile puzzle solving in the past five years, and it deserves a good chat.
I am thirty this year, and I have played Snake, Thunder, and Prince of Persia in the Saipan era to Genshin Impact and Bentie now. I have also witnessed the transformation of mobile games from pixel blocks to today's 4K image quality. To be honest, the graphics of today's games are getting better and better, but it's rare to find one that allows people to calm down and play for a whole day and still reminisce about the plot at night. "The Street" is an exception.
I downloaded this game on a bored weekend, just to kill time, but ended up playing it for five hours. The game adopts a dual-perspective switching mode between 2D horizontal version and 3D first-person perspective, which is very rare in mobile games. To be honest, I was a little uncomfortable with it at first. I always felt that switching perspectives would interrupt my immersion. But after playing it, I discovered that the production team used this design very skillfully - the 2D part is used to explore the scene and collect clues, and the 3D part is used to present key plots and puzzles. The switching between the two is natural and smooth, without any sense of separation.
In terms of picture quality, it is no exaggeration to say that this is the closest to the level of PC games I have ever seen on a mobile phone. Especially those retro and nostalgic scenes from the 1980s, the old-fashioned barber shop, yellowed wallpaper, and squeaky ceiling fans. Every frame looks like it was cut out of an old movie. The integration of ethnic minority folklore elements is also very natural, without the feeling of being copied mechanically, but adds a layer of mystery to the entire suspenseful story. The dubbing is a bonus. The dubbing of the protagonist and NPC is very attentive. It can be heard that it is done by professional actors, not the kind of AI that speaks in vain or perfunctory.
Let's get back to the plot. "The Street" tells a story that combines love and suspense. The protagonist played by the player returns to his hometown town and finds that everything here is different from what he remembered, and everyone around him seems to be hiding secrets. As the exploration deepens, a period of joys and sorrows that spans the ages slowly emerges. To be honest, when I got to the second half of the game, I spent those few nights thinking about the plot direction. The touch of sadness and the nostalgic atmosphere of the 1980s in the story reminded me of the feeling I had when playing "Machinarium" and "The Silent Age" - the kind of puzzle solving was not for the sake of clearing the level, but for the urge to learn more about the truth.
The charging mode is 0, which means it is free. I must give this a thumbs up. Nowadays, mobile games are all about 648, first-time recharge, and monthly cards. Works like "Street" that do not cost money at all and rely solely on plot and gameplay to attract players are really rare. The developer is Xiamen Amusement Interactive Technology Co., Ltd. I had no impression of them before, but this game made me look at them with admiration. I hope they can maintain this ingenuity in the future and not be held hostage by capital.
The only complaint is that the operating platform only supports iOS5.0 and above, and the Android version does not seem to be available simultaneously, which is not very friendly to the Android party. In addition, the game process is not long, about 6-8 hours. If you are looking for an immersive experience, it is recommended to play through it in one go, because it is easy to forget the clues intermittently.
Finally, a little digression. In today's game industry, major companies are doing social networking, card drawing, and numerical calculations. There are really fewer and fewer products like "Street" that honestly tell stories and solve puzzles. I miss the days in the Symbian era when I could download Snake and play it for half a year, and I also miss the time when classmates spread rumors about playing "Arrogant Eagle" on Nokia. But having said that, times are changing, and game forms are changing. As long as there are teams willing to polish a stand-alone puzzle game, this genre will not die.
If you also like nostalgia, puzzle solving, and the feeling of piecing together a complete story from fragmentary clues, I recommend you give "Street" a try. Maybe you can find your own touch in it. 😌