August 31, 1967. Cold War Germany, a nation split down the middle.
Hans Tannhauser, an American student of Quantum Physics in his late twenties, is surprised to discover that he has won an all-expenses paid trip to a small, German village: Trüberbrook. Sure, he doesn't remember taking part in any competition for such a prize, but why let a perfectly good plane ticket and hotel room go to waste?
The journey is long, but the town is peaceful and pleasant if a bit run-down. Its citizens are abustle over the recent discovery of an intact dinosaur skeleton in the nearby marshes, and are in deep preparations for Trüberbrook's 998th anniversary. This tranquil and remote slice of the nation of his forefathers might just be the place where Hans can clear his head enough to finally finish his thesis, which he is on the verge of cracking.
Then, in the dead of night, his papers are stolen by a man with glowing footprints.
During his search for the culprit, he gets to know the villagers, each one stranger than the last and of little-to-no help to his investigation. With the nearest police detective days away, his only hope for assistance may lie in young paleoanthropologist and fellow tourist Gretchen Lemke, who agrees to aid him when the thief's trail leads into the mountains where some Proto-Germanic ruins she's hoping to find supposedly are. But beneath the silent, ever-present gaze of Saturn, who knows what else could be up there?
Trüberbrook is a fully-voiced, single player sci-fi mystery adventure game developed by Bildundtonfabrik and published by Headup Games that draws heavily from the likes of Twin Peaks, The X-Files, and Monkey Island, albeit with a mid-20th century twist. It boasts a "handcrafted" aesthetic for its various environments as they were constructed with physical miniature sets that were scanned and inserted into the game's engine through a process called photogrammetry.
The title was funded on Kickstarter in under 30 hours, and released in 2019. It is available on iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.
The game's official website can be found here
. The complete official soundtrack can be listened to here.
Trope guide for the international visitor:
- Alien Sky: Eccentric townsfolk aside, the setting of the game is fairly normal save for Saturn being large and constantly visible even in daytime.
- Bag of Spilling: Tannhauser will sometimes take note that his inventory has been emptied out, but due to a developer oversight, he technically never loses any items except the ones that he uses up or gives away.
- Bedlam House: Double subverted with the Sanitarium Paradiso mental institution cum spa resort. While pristine in its public sectors and staff offices, the holding cells for patients are dilapidated and grungy.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Using the portal in the climax sends Tannhauser to the raw un-chroma-keyed village square model, complete with un-textured, un-voiced character models, including his own.
- Closed Circle: Save for Chapter 1 and 4, each puzzle section of the game is doled out in inescapable single room segments where all challenges and solutions can be found in the given environment.
- "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: A variant, as you can select and combine the lyrics sung by "The Band from Another Place" during their big musical number during the anniversary festival.
- Dying Town: After the Millennium Cooperative gutted its mines and scared off most of the tourists with their obscure construction projects, Trüberbrook has been in its "off-season" for over a decade.
- Germanic Depressives: Tannhauser, an American tourist of German descent, only manages to pass the personality tests of the Sanatorium Paradiso after he learns that his initial responses to them were too well-adjusted and happy to be in line with what a post-World War 2/Cold War German citizen would say. When he starts doling out more damaged and pessimistic answers, the doctors declare him "a real human" and let him leave since someone of this mindset can't possibly be an alien or a robot.
- Go-Karting with Bowser: During the concert by "The Band from Another Place", a number of the game's antagonists can be seen in the crowd listening to the music.
- Inn Security: Tannhauser's notes are stolen the very first night he spends at the local inn he had a free room at.
- Last-Second Ending Choice: Tannhauser can either leave to explore the multiverse with Taft or stay behind so as not to abandon his loved ones on his Earth.
- MacGyvering: Tannhauser does this regularly. Sometimes in rather sensible ways (ex. creating a makeshift flashlight with some jarred fireflies), occasionally veering into more obtuse territory (ex. stuffing a cheese skewer into a straw to form a makeshift dart gun), and climaxing with finding and combining some truly out-there implements when he has to construct the Quantum Discriminator.
- Mad Scientist: Of the scientists seen, who cover a wide range of disciplines, the ones affiliated with the Millennium Cooperative tend to veer into Evil Genius territory whilst the rest like Tannhauser and Lübke are just kind of odd. Taft might be the most normal and sane one of the bunch, and he's technically an alien.
- Mushroom Samba: Hallucinogenic mushrooms can be found in Trüberbrook which are used for medicinal and culinary purposes. Bolzenschuss, the local schnapps speciality, has them as a primary ingredient. When Tannhauser tries some after completing a puzzle, he attributes a sudden shift from the summer to winter seasons to the mushrooms in the drink, only for Madonna Lübke to shuffle into the scene to confirm that this change is indeed real. Tannhauser then realizes that this was a moment of Reality Bleed due to the Saturn Portal being tampered with further, and he's running out of time.
- Rollercoaster Mine: Rather than simply use a propane tank to blow away the heavy debris covering the entrance of a mineshaft, Tannhauser opts to strap it onto a mine cart he repaired so that he can not only break through the blockade but net himself a quick ride into the heart of the mountain he needs to explore. This turns out to be a good thing, as the shaft is very, very long, and some of the parts of the mine cart help him out in the next puzzle.
- Scenery Porn: The photogrammetry techniques used in creating the game's environments result in gorgeous and highly detailed scenery across all platforms.
- Surprisingly Creepy Moment: The marshes of Trüberbrook, which are gray, dark, and have a dead body in them.
- Thanking the Viewer: Outside of the credits, the names of all the Kickstarter backers can be found in a guestbook located in Tannhauser's room and in the patient logs of the Sanatorium Paradiso.
- Tomato Surprise: A mid-credits scene reveals the true nature of the game's first playable sequence - it's a Stealth Sequel depicting Gretchen's adventures in the multiverse after being knocked through the portal; the gas station is on a small asteroid in space and the motorcycle has an AI.
- World of Symbolism: From what is said and read during the story, Trüberbrook is Cold War Germany as the Millennium Cooperative (an aggressive, outside, international force) came in shortly after the end of the second World War, gutted the place for resources to fulfill its agendas, and left the the town a shell of its former self. The specter of communism, the promise of the Space Age, and an underlying theme of emigrating to blocked off and hopefully better places loom large.
