Treasure-hunting adventures are rarely straightforward thanks to treasure hunting, secrets, and competing motives. Bilkins’ Folly combines all of these together while choosing to turn up the puzzle difficulty to a great level. Solving puzzles and hunting down treasure doesn’t seem difficult at first. Unfortunately, the puzzle difficulty quickly ramps up and the clue quality gets worse. The result is a game that is too challenging to enjoy because the advantages are hidden behind the difficulty.
You control Percy Bilkins who is on a quest to find his mother and grandfather who went missing on their journeys. He’s a novice adventurer and quickly ends up washed ashore on an island. Luckily, he managed to stumble onto the same path that his family traveled long ago. Percy must build a crew and sail to the surrounding islands, hoping to meet his family.
Bilkins’ Folly tells a coherent story addressing all the plot points. There are some touching moments and humor sprinkled throughout to keep you engaged. You feel the story’s charm through the characters as their facial expressions convey their feelings. Character speech is actual gibberish which prevents you from hearing the emotional tones. Thankfully, the truly funny or emotional moments have good writing to get around the lack of emotion. The story’s coherent plot is a strength, but it feels like the adventure passed up storytelling in favor of puzzles. Learning more about Percy’s drive to find his family or the characters you meet would help you relate to them. Instead, you spend more time solving puzzles than on character development and motivations. It feels like a missed opportunity for a stronger story and better characters.
Unfortunately, the story is filled with puzzles and fetch quests because most characters don’t go for the simple solution. While treasure hunting is rarely a straightforward adventure, the difficulty of these puzzles borders on frustrating. You often get a single objective and some clues, but the clues aren’t precise and visual images don’t match what you are looking for. While a puzzle game shouldn’t be too easy for players, it feels like the game’s longevity depends on the difficulty. All you know is the objective with a few vague clues to help you out. Bilkins’ Folly doesn’t tell you how you should tackle a puzzle, you must figure it out on your own. The vague clues and unclear objectives are a double-edged sword.
On one hand, it makes you feel proud to put solutions together by yourself; solving difficult puzzles is a great confidence booster and it makes you feel immersed in the gameplay. Percy’s journey isn’t easy and you must work as an amateur cartographer at times. Treasures aren’t supposed to be easy to find, which makes every success feel like a step towards your ultimate goal. On the other hand, some suspension of disbelief is worn down. It feels weird that treasure hunters would leave vague clues for their treasure in stores. Some of the clues don’t actually resemble their in-game locations or require obtuse methods to track them down. It’s true that buried treasure isn’t supposed to be easy to find, but the instructions to find the treasure should be clear. Percy isn’t looking for pirate treasure most of the time, making the treasure instructions feel difficult for the sake of being difficult.
It’s worse when you encounter puzzles in the world and don’t get instructions. While it goes back to finding the answer on your own, you often have no guidance. This goes beyond getting clues while solving a puzzle; there are times you have no idea what the goal is. That means you are often trying something, anything to figure out how you solve a puzzle. Experienced puzzle veterans might figure out the goal, but new players will struggle to figure out what they should do. Spending hours just solving one puzzle is tiring and frustrating, which reduces the value of the reward. Having more clues or helpful features to steer players in the right direction would have been a big help.
If the story starts to wear you down, there are several side activities to help break the monotony. Percy may be looking for his family but it’s not a cheap journey. He must earn funds which are found through gold mining or participating in treasure hunts. There’s also a sub-plot that involves finding junk throughout all the islands you visit. These side activities provide a nice diversion from the main story while giving you some advantages. You can improve your treasure-hunting knowledge or make use of the game’s environment to uncover treasure you have missed. One of Bilkins’ Folly’s strengths is that few areas are irrelevant and there’s always something new lurking behind the environment. If you can’t access something, you must unlock the relevant tool or purchase another clue to help you.
However, the side activities suffer from the same problem as the main story’s puzzles. While the goal is clearer in most cases, the clues are often even more vague as the puzzles become harder. Unless you have lots of time to spare or are an experienced veteran, it’s difficult to finish all the puzzles.
If you ever want to feel like a cartographer, Bilkins’ Folly provides tools to help you find points on a map. There’s some math involved which is great for immersion as you plot your destination with the clues you have. Finding the right answer this way is encouraging and provides good motivation to keep plotting your course. You must purchase tools to expand your cartography skills, which can be expensive. Side activities help pay for those tools, but it exposes you to the challenges of those puzzles. There’s no option to confirm if you are correct, which makes cartography difficult. You can also use other tools to make the game easier, but they don’t always work effectively.
Bilkins’ Folly is a great puzzle adventure game for players who want a challenge and don’t want any training wheels. You will spend hours trying to solve all the puzzles and get to the end of Percy’s adventure. But if you are looking for an easy game that pushes you slightly out of your comfort zone, this isn’t the game for you.
Victor reviewed Bilkins’ Folly on PC with a review code.
