A cleverly designed game filled with hidden choices however could ease down the wall of text though.
If you happen to come across the trailer, most likely your first reaction screams 'Fallout' – you know, The Typhon Project being fallout shelters or vaults if you prefer to call them, the game doesn't really explain what actually happened to the world though. There are glimpses of what might have happened however it's more of a tale between two people being Richard and Alice (obviously). Yet explaining the plot will enter spoiler territory as considering the entire game is based on the actions of these two characters.
Now here is the game's strength and weaknesses lie. The strength is storytelling and boy it does it well. A slow build up is necessary for the player to understand the characters of Richard and Alice otherwise if rushed, you will not appreciate the final scenes of this game. However because it's also deemed as a point-and-click adventure game, I feel that that's an afterthought from telling the tale. It could be that developers Owl Cave had a story to tell however struggled to translate that into a computer game and the closest thing they got was a point-and-click adventure game. I feel this would better suit as a short film than a computer game.
Yet this follows on my next point – the game is entirely a wall of text. Of course there's nothing wrong with that as some games are famed because of this (e.g. Planescape Torment). However because there are minimal animations and puzzles to solve, the game struggles to maintain its 'adventure game' feel. Coming back to my previous example Planescape Torment, at least that game also plays well as a role playing game.
During my play through, the game was terribly predicable it wasn't funny. Seriously, I almost got to the stage of skipping the dialogues entirely. Thankfully I didn't as the game diabolically placed hidden choices as this was noticeable during my second run. Why I played this game twice is because it has five different endings and naturally because I 'steered the boat' to the direction I chose during my first play through, naturally it came to no surprise what the ending will be. Well, that's a small lie as even though I imagined what the ending will be, I was still a little rattled that the game displayed what I have imagined (and my imagination was pretty bleak).
But during my second play through, the ending was not as I expected because even though I steered my boat into another direction intentionally and because I was forcing myself to get a different ending, I didn't predict the second outcome. This is, the essence, of a great dialogue tree hidden behind the game as strangely enough, the dialogue themselves are not obtrusive (as it mainly consists of one to two sentences at a time), it certainly served its purpose as if you want a certain outcome, you will get it (thus predictable). Other words, the game will play it the way you want to play it. And because of this, adds a decent replay value as the first run should take about four hours to complete.
Visually and soundwise are both minimalistic at best. Obviously it's the game's weakest point as you can see in the various screenshots, that's about as much detail you're going to get. Thankfully there's no pixel hunting as mentioned before, there's not much puzzles to solve. However they can at least improve the character's expressions on the top left of the screen exhibiting say fear or anger as all the images are static thus can throw away the intensity of some sentences. Yet, because it's well written the overall message did deliver so all wasn't entirely lost in translation. Soundwise there's not much to talk about as there's not much to go by other than the occasional noise of the wind. However the ambiance musical scores did serve its purpose to suit the required scenes and there's absolutely no voice acting.
Richard and Alice is a difficult game to classify – it's not a true adventure game as the puzzles seem to be an afterthought from telling a story however the themes behind it all seem real. That is, there are no monsters or supernatural beings - just a believable story between two people. However I feel it would be better off as a short film however the graphics and sounds don't qualify well enough and besides, how can you show off the multiple endings? So you have this dilemma – what exactly is it? A gloomy 'choose your own adventure' I guess with a healthy dose of imagination; so don't leave home without it.