Sometimes the simplest games leave you all tearful and emotional.
When I first downloaded Cool Lemon Club Keyboardist For Playdate, I didn’t have very good expectations because so many people online recommend it. The adventure game that exists and formal , sees the player searching for the many different keys needed to unlock areas of the mysterious Winchester 21 building after taking on the role of caretaker. The person who previously held this position is gone, leaving behind only some cryptic records, and the inhabitants are varying degrees of strange.
On the face of it, it looks like a pretty standard game of puzzle solving and exploration. It’s very frustrating as you retrace your steps over and over as you try to navigate multiple floors and a labyrinthine tunnel system to find Winchester 21’s keys and the doors they open. But as the plot unfolds and you uncover more of the building’s secrets, Keyboardist turns out to be a game with a lot of heart.
Its charm lies in the strange interactions between you and the people who inhabit the apartments (and tunnels…and walls) of Winchester 21. Each of them have their own little stories, some of which introduce you to new secrets and side quests. to take One in particular really tugged at my heartstrings, but I wouldn’t dare spoil it for you here.
Keyboardist it’s a little dark, a little funny, and just the right amount of challenging. While it does offer the option to save your progress so you can walk away and come back later, I’d recommend setting aside a few hours and playing it in one shot for maximum impact. By the time you get to the end and finally figure out what’s going on, the whole tone of the game has changed to something more heartwarming than it first appeared. I might have even cried a little in the final scene.
