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ENCODYA

Encodya, is a charming point and click adventure, that harkens back to the glory days of the Genre. While Grim Fandango this is not, people who love the genre, will love Encodya.
ENCODYA Game Cover
70%Game Brain Score
story, graphics
grinding, character development
73% User Score Based on 219 reviews
Critic Score 66%Based on 9 reviews

Platforms

Nintendo SwitchPlaystation 4XboxiPhoneWindowsPlayStationLinuxXbox Series X|SPCMac OSPhoneXbox OneiPadMobile Platform
ENCODYA Game Cover

About

ENCODYA is a single player action adventure game with mystery, post-apocalyptic and science fiction themes. It was developed by Chaosmonger Studio and was released on January 26, 2021. It received mostly positive reviews from both critics and players.

It’s 2062. Tina – a 9 years old orphan – lives with SAM-53 – her big clumsy robot guardian – on a rooftop makeshift shelter in Neo-Berlin, a dark megalopolis controlled by corporations.

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73%
Audience ScoreBased on 219 reviews
story70 positive mentions
grinding10 negative mentions

  • Beautiful and atmospheric cyberpunk art style with detailed environments and animations.
  • Engaging and heartfelt story focusing on the relationship between Tina and her robot SAM-53.
  • Good voice acting, music, and sound design that complement the game world.
  • Traditional point-and-click adventure gameplay with a decent length and some challenging puzzles.
  • Quality world-building with diverse NPCs and a believable dystopian setting.
  • Useful quality-of-life features like autosave, a map with fast travel, and two difficulty modes with hints.
  • Gameplay suffers from frequent pixel hunting and unintuitive puzzle solutions, especially in hard mode without hints.
  • Slow character movement and loading screens make exploration tedious.
  • Inventory management is clunky; many useless items and excessive backtracking.
  • Dialogue choices and NPC interactions can be repetitive and lack depth, sometimes breaking immersion with meta-jokes.
  • The storyline is sometimes shallow, clichéd, and politically heavy-handed without fresh insight.
  • Large robot character often obstructs the view, causing frustration when finding items.
  • Some puzzles rely on trial and error or obscure logic that may frustrate players unfamiliar with the genre.
  • story
    210 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The story of Encodya offers a heartfelt, atmospheric cyberpunk narrative centered on a young orphan and her robot companion, touching on themes of humanity and survival in a dystopian world. While many praise its art, mood, and emotional moments, critiques highlight a slow pace, repetitive fetch quests, and a plot that can feel clichéd, disjointed, or underdeveloped, with some characters and themes lacking depth or originality. Overall, it appeals mainly to fans seeking a charming, lightly paced story with nostalgic point-and-click elements rather than those craving a tightly woven or highly engaging narrative.

    • “It has a beautiful story of humanity, and the environment is very reminiscent of the original Blade Runner.”
    • “Their companionship forms the emotional core of the story, and much of the game’s heart lies in how these two interact with the world and with each other.”
    • “The story is bittersweet and well written, albeit a bit simple and clichéd.”
    • “The second major flaw of the game is the story, or lack of it.”
    • “For most part of the game, you just try to find something, grocery shopping list, info about your dad, etc and barely any story happens.”
    • “It sadly just gets very boring, and the story is not interesting whatsoever, and the gameplay doesn't really make up for it.”
  • graphics
    83 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The game's graphics are widely praised for their distinctive, charming cartoonish and cyberpunk art style, with detailed environments and smooth animations that create an immersive atmosphere. While some find the art style unusual or dated, the visual design, including cutscenes and character models, is generally considered a major highlight. Minor criticisms include occasional pixel-hunting and mixed opinions on certain textures, but overall the graphics strongly contribute to the game's appeal.

    • “The visuals are simply stunning and I felt immersed in the world all the time.”
    • “Graphically, Encodya is visually appealing to anyone that enjoys that dark cyberpunk feel, with many stunning locations to explore and incredible cinematic cutscenes.”
    • “The environments visuals are stunning and beautiful, especially the atmospheric cyberpunk urban areas full of neon signs, rain, and people wearing headsets and plugged into cyberspace.”
    • “The graphics and gameplay are what's advertised, which is a mid-2000's cereal box tier free game.”
    • “❌ Graphics feel way too dated and ugly for character models.”
    • “While I enjoyed some of the secrets, such as the item in your inventory that changes the graphics, I hated the one where you had to find a button, a single pixel, on a completely uninteresting screen.”
  • music
    55 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The music in the game is widely praised for its atmospheric, ambient, and cyberpunk-inspired soundtrack that beautifully complements the game's visuals and setting. Many reviewers highlight the soundtrack as a standout feature, noting its emotional depth and immersive quality, with some expressing a desire to purchase it separately. Overall, the music significantly enhances the game's mood and narrative experience.

    • “The soundscape complements this aesthetic beautifully, blending moody ambient music with subdued mechanical hums, urban echoes, and subtle emotional cues.”
    • “The game's soundtrack is also gorgeous and largely made up of these ambient orchestrations that feel firmly in touch with the game's cyberpunk genre.”
    • “The setting, the puzzles, the visuals, music - a definite high point speaking as a composer, and above all else the wonderful story really hit the spot for me.”
    • “If you don't solve a keypad code based on a song, you can't progress - how is anyone supposed to figure that out?”
    • “The graphics are good, the constant rain and relaxing background music are atmospheric - and that's about all I can recommend.”
    • “Voice acting is nice and suitable for the tone of the game, and the music is just okay.”
  • gameplay
    47 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The gameplay in Encodya is a traditional point-and-click adventure featuring inventory puzzles, character-switching mechanics, and environmental interactions, but it often feels slow, dated, and occasionally illogical or obtuse. While some appreciate the atmospheric setting, humor, and character dynamics, many find the puzzle design and pacing lacking compared to classic or contemporary adventure games, resulting in a mixed overall experience.

    • “Gameplay adheres closely to traditional adventure design—inventory puzzles, environmental interaction, dialogue branching, and exploration across multiple urban districts.”
    • “You alternate between controlling Tina and Sam-53, a mechanical choice that adds variety to puzzle-solving since each character has different strengths and social abilities.”
    • “Not only does it nail the gameplay (combining disparate items into wacky new gadgets, pixel hunting for that one item or clue you missed and gradually tying seemingly disparate map locations together) but the characterization and voice acting are generally excellent, and the game crucially balances moments of humour and levity with real profundity and sadness.”
    • “The gameplay starts out relatively promising, inventory puzzles are mostly logical (although it is mostly just inventory puzzles, I think the first proper puzzle appears in Encodya almost more than halfway through the game completion), and while the story doesn't offer much in chapter 1, it at least leaves potential for exploring certain narrative themes later down the line.”
    • “This game’s story, puzzle design, and gameplay are so trite, unpolished, boring, absurd, and dated that I got tired of and frustrated with it halfway through.”
    • “The story is a bit weak and cliched (typical post-(VR)-apocalyptic world), but it's executed well enough; characters are alright (none too remarkable, but also none too awful); gameplay-wise, it's the typical puzzle point & clicker, most puzzles are fine, some are obtuse (it definitely suffers from the all-too-common nonsense of requiring a very specific thing to accomplish something, when in real life you could do the same with several of the items you already have), and some are outright illogical (I'd recommend the devs to read a little more about how electricity works).”
  • atmosphere
    30 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The game excels at creating a distinctive and immersive cyberpunk atmosphere through its art style, music, and environmental details like rain and neon-lit urban settings. While some find the world visually stunning and mood-evoking, others note occasional thematic shallowness and a lack of dynamic, bustling environments that could enhance immersion. Overall, its warm, synth-driven soundtrack and visual consistency strongly support a relaxing yet captivating atmospheric experience.

    • “Players seeking a relaxing but atmospheric experience, something to sink into rather than conquer, will likely appreciate its pacing and tone.”
    • “The art style feels distinct and consistent, and the music and effects do a great job of building atmosphere.”
    • “The environments visuals are stunning and beautiful, especially the atmospheric cyberpunk urban areas full of neon signs, rain, and people wearing headsets and plugged into cyberspace.”
    • “The store page mentions that the atmosphere is inspired by Blade Runner, so you would assume that Neo Berlin is a sprawling megaplex, but every screen basically feels empty and lifeless.”
    • “They just ruin the atmosphere.”
    • “Its flaws—occasional puzzle opacity, restrained thematic depth, familiar genre conventions—never overshadow its sense of atmosphere, warmth, and visual identity.”
  • humor
    27 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The humor in the game is polarizing; some players appreciated its clever quips, pop culture references, and occasional heartfelt moments, while others found the jokes—especially political parodies and fourth wall breaks—forced, unfunny, or immersion-breaking. Tone inconsistency leads to humor falling flat for some, though characters and certain moments still elicit smiles. Overall, humor ranges from charming and smart to tedious and distracting depending on the player.

    • “Sam-53’s robotic literalism slowly softens into something resembling empathy, creating humorous and touching moments that break up the bleakness of the setting.”
    • “An adventure game with old school vibes, full of hilarious quips, geek culture references (Futurama, Day of the Tentacle, Konami cheat codes, etc.), and smart social criticism.”
    • “The story writing was clever, funny, and heartwarming.”
    • “It's cheap and it's not funny, so what is it for if it's only breaking immersion.”
    • “It's not funny.”
    • “Not funny.”
  • emotional
    18 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The game delivers a heartfelt and emotionally compelling story centered on the companionship between its protagonists, enhanced by a fitting soundscape and touching moments of empathy. While some players found the narrative sweet and moving—especially toward the introspective ending—others felt the emotional impact was undermined by plot holes and awkward characters. Overall, the game evokes a mix of warmth, humor, and melancholy, leaving many players emotionally engaged despite some narrative and design flaws.

    • “Their companionship forms the emotional core of the story, and much of the game’s heart lies in how these two interact with the world and with each other.”
    • “Sam-53’s robotic literalism slowly softens into something resembling empathy, creating humorous and touching moments that break up the bleakness of the setting.”
    • “By the time the story turns more introspective and surreal—particularly during its journey into consciousness and memory—the emotional investment feels earned.”
  • grinding
    10 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    Grinding in the game is often described as tedious and frustrating, marked by cumbersome inventory management, excessive pixel-hunting, and poorly designed UI that hampers smooth progression. While some gameplay elements feel reasonable, many fetch quests and hidden-object tasks detract from the experience, making grinding feel more like a chore than an engaging challenge.

    • “This can be a tedious process especially with the way the zone transitioning works.”
    • “Too many tedious pixel hunts to look for a list of things irrelevant to the game to find something that someone needs to get the game moving again.”
    • “About half of them are sensible and don't feel like chores, but there are also several tedious fetch quests thrown in.”
  • character development
    5 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The character development is praised for its distinct and appealing designs, particularly the robots like Sam-53, which stand out more than human characters. While the blend of fantasy and cyberpunk elements enhances the visual charm, some feel the story and character depth are slightly incomplete, affecting overall engagement.

    • “Character designs, especially Tina and Sam-53, strike a balance between stylized charm and believable presence, ensuring that even secondary NPCs have a distinct silhouette or personality trait.”
    • “The designer of Sam did a great job - the robots stand out more than any of the people in terms of character design.”
    • “The mixture of fantasy and cyberpunk using whispered world-like character designs and primordia-like environmental elements creates a unique and captivating atmosphere.”
    • “The story kind of made me think less of the game; it felt like it was missing something, and the character design might bother some people, though I was able to overlook it after a while due to the environments.”
    • “And whoever designed Sam did a great job - I think the robots stand out more than any of the people in terms of character design.”
    • “Character designs, especially Tina and Sam-53, strike a balance between stylized charm and believable presence, but even secondary NPCs could have more distinct personality traits.”
  • optimization
    5 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The game's optimization is generally solid, running smoothly without major bugs or clipping issues, though minor performance hiccups occur occasionally. Overall, it maintains stable performance throughout, contributing positively to the experience.

    • “Technically solid: the game ran just fine, it didn’t bug, clip, or suffer from performance issues.”
    • “Minor performance issues here and there.”
    • “No other relevant quotes found pertaining to optimization.”
    • “- Minor performance issues here and there”
    • “Technically solid: the game ran just fine; it didn't bug, clip, or suffer from performance issues.”
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9h Median play time
7h Average play time
8-9h Spent by most gamers
*Based on 4 analyzed playthroughs
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Frequently Asked Questions

ENCODYA is a action adventure game with mystery, post-apocalyptic and science fiction themes.

ENCODYA is available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, iPhone, Windows and others.

On average players spend around 7 hours playing ENCODYA.

ENCODYA was released on January 26, 2021.

ENCODYA was developed by Chaosmonger Studio.

ENCODYA has received mostly positive reviews from both players and critics. Most players liked this game for its story but disliked it for its grinding.

ENCODYA is a single player game.

Similar games include Unforeseen Incidents, Beyond a Steel Sky, VirtuaVerse, Gemini Rue, Call of the Sea and others.