Indie Game World Rating: 8/10

Minatures is a collection of four meticulously crafted short click-and-point stories from Other Tale Interactive. Each explores unique worlds filled with magic and mystery. In Paludarium, the first tale, childhood imagination transforms a story of a mundane day at home into something bizarre and extraordinary.

Paludarium Story Synopsis

In this tale, we follow Emil, a young girl home alone on a gray afternoon. A phone call from her mother hints that she and her father are working late and won’t be home for a while. By the way Emil responds and goes about her familiar routines – playing on the piano, absently looking in the fridge, and collecting snails for her pet lizard – the boundaries between domestic space and nature begin to blur. The story’s progression can be read as both an unraveling of whimsical metaphors or a subtly unsettling turn of events.

The color palette perfectly supports this story. Cool blues engulf the empty house, while Emil’s memories and the natural world are a vibrant mauve. The warm tones mimic the heat lamp in her lizard’s paludarium. As you progress in the story, nature overwhelms the home with pink flora and fauna.

Gameplay Mechanics

As far as point-and-clicks go, Paludarium is elegantly simple. Interactable elements are matte black against the hand-drawn, textured world. The background details – such as plates, tables, the clock, are rendered in clean, minimalist linework.

Even with the interactable elements standing out, it can be frustrating if you miss something, because backtracking can take some time. This is most likely intentional, as it forces the player to experience the vast, quiet space as Emil does.

Explore Your Imagination With Minatures: Paludarium

Minatures: Paludarium blurs the line between reality and the abstract in a new and interesting way. Though it can be quite slow at times, and perhaps difficult to engage with due to limited gameplay, it only takes around 15-25 minutes to complete. The world of Emil is beautifully crafted, with a haunting soundscape to compliment the theme and artwork. I highly recommend giving it a shot to see how much this mini world can influence your perception of the imagination.