SUNDAY FUNDAY

SUNDAY GOLD is a point-and-click adventure that penalises clicking on everything

- Ted Litchfield

Sunday Gold almost feels like a reshuffle of Final Fantasy VII. You’ve got the corporate overlord and his secret labs gutting an over-industrialised city, the rag-tag freedom fighters – complete with disaffected loner and bruiser lady with a heart of gold – and a secret base under a dive bar to return to. It’s red meat, classic videogame stuff. The game’s initial trailers drew me in with its arresting neo-’70s sci-fi setting, but the most refreshing thing about Sunday Gold is its combo of old school JRPG gameplay with point-and-click adventuring.

The trend in newer RPGs (I’m thinking Pillars of Eternity, Divinity 2) is to bring you back to full health in-between fights, letting players focus on the tactical minutia of each battle. Sunday Gold instead tasks you with treating each of its three chapterheists as a long war of attrition, managing party members’ health, stress, action points, and consumables, negotiating Sierra-style exploration and item gathering puzzles as well as dust-ups with corporate security without any real breaks.