Trüberbrook Switch Review – A Hand Crafted Sci-Fi Mystery

Trüberbrook is an atmospheric point-and-click puzzle game set in the gorgeous countryside of 1960’s Germany. You play as Hans Tannhauser, an American quantum physicist on holiday in the quaint and rural town of Trüberbrook after winning lottery tickets for a visit. Although the town’s residents seem a little odd, the visit starts out as pretty much normal, as Hans interacts with the quirky characters, solving puzzles for them, and learning about the strange history of the town.

However, one night, a mysterious figure sneaks into Hans’ hotel room and steals a paper on quantum physics he’d been working on. Quickly, the story twists into a high stakes supernatural adventure filled with danger and mystery.

So is this a point-and-click adventure worthy of your valuable time? Let’s find out!

For me, Trüberbrook’s story is the absolute selling point. Each character is filled with unique charm and brought to life with brilliant voice acting. Right from the start to the final cutscene, Trüberbrook brings an amazing story that I was genuinely invested in exploring and understanding. It moved at a steady pace and never felt like it was rushing ahead or lagging behind.

Something else I find incredible about the game is its art. Each scene was actually hand built by the development team and is its own little diorama, and that level of life like detail does really show in the game.

The incredible art and story mixed together with the gorgeous, melancholy soundtrack creates one of the most incredible vibes I have ever experienced, and yes, vibe is definitely a professional game reviewing term.

So now, moving onto the main part of the game, the puzzles themselves. Something I did really like about them was that they always have relevance to the story. There was never a puzzle that felt useless or unrewarding, which is great to see as a lot of puzzle games do struggle with that.

Despite the puzzles being relevant, I was often reluctant to complete them due to the insane amount of trial-and-error I found myself having to use. Most of the puzzles either require you to combine items in your inventory with other items in the environment or to use dialogue options to get information from other characters. The solutions are so wildly unpredictable at times that I found myself using a lot more walkthroughs than I would have liked to, so I did feel like I was cheating a lot of the time.

Even after looking at walkthroughs, I often still felt there was no way I could have got that simply on my own. Trüberbrook also has this feature that brings up a little red X on all the items you can interact with, so nothing gets lost to the background, but I found this regularly didn’t work.

So although Trüberbrook’s puzzles are at times seemingly unsolvable, they’re pulled together by a compelling story that encourages to keep moving enthusiastically through the game.

The overall impeccable aesthetic of a countryside holiday in a strange town creates a unique experience that I can’t easily forget. For that alone, this is well worth your time.

Trüberbrook Switch Review provided by Nintendo Link
Publisher: Headup Games
Developer: Bildundtonfabrik
Release Date: April 18th, 2019
Price: $24.99, £29.99, €29.99
Game Size: 7.4 GB