The Last Show of Mr. Chardish – Game Review

The Last Show of Mr.Chardish is a story-rich exploration game from the developers at Punk Notion. You play as Ella, who returns to an abandoned theatre to uncover a preserved collection of extraordinary performances. Come get lost in the hand-painted worlds that you will explore.

The Last Show is a real testament to storytelling. Instead of giving you the story straight on, it opts to tell it in hyperbole. Showing these massive set pieces that depict wonderful and/or hard tones, but undertones of Mr. Chardishes feelings seep out, giving you a glimpse behind the master of these works.

You will explore five playstyles: Solitude, Anger, Symmetry, Ascension, and Daydream. We won’t be going into much detail about what they mean because the journey in the game is to interpret and feel the acts. I don’t want to ruin your experience I will, however, give you the mechanics.

Solitude has you explore a shaded land where you will use lights to reveal hidden steps or remove obstacles in your way.

Anger has you fighting through many forms of prop wildlife with a sword.

Symmetry has you play as a robot that controls its companion through curtain obstacles in a mirror movement style.

Ascension has you, in the beginning, traversing the landscape by lunging at statues till you transform into a bird for the latter part.

And finally, Daydream allows you to paint the grey world around you with bright and vibrant colours. 

In-between the set pieces, you will explore the run-down theatre, finding many notes and letters scattered about. Some are stage directions, how to do hair, music sheets, and then there are the letters which is a great source of background information on the people that worked there, and Chardish himself. You don’t spend a lot of time in the theatre and it is very linear, but you can miss some of the notes if you rush too quickly. 

Graphically, it’s a very unique style. Background and landscapes look canvas painted, with strokes and slight imperfections like it was a far background piece on the painting. The main character reminds me of clay-sculpted figures, and the enemies or other characters are your prop bags hanging on ropes and artist mannequins.

Sound design is beautiful, with scores that seem to have been ripped right out of a theatre production that really envelop the feeling of watching and interacting with the play. 

All in all, this game is about an hour and a half long but is filled to the brim with amazing design, music, and story. People that love stories with a little undertone along the way will fall in love with The Last Show, and if you like small little puzzles in your game, you may want to grab it too.

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