American Arcadia Review – Life on the Screen

American Arcadia on PS5 Pro

Do you ever feel like life is a little mundane? For some, that comes with a sense of comfort; for others, it slowly wears at you. What if you suddenly discover that there’s more to the day than just your routine, and there is actually a larger conspiracy at play? That’s American Arcadia, a puzzle platformer from Out of the Blue and Raw Fury.

If you find the game familiar, you would be right. It was first released on PC in 2023 and has now arrived on consoles for the first time. New players are getting a unique experience that combines a thoughtful narrative with some innovative gameplay. It all centres around everyman Trevor, whose entire view on life collapses as he discovers that nothing is real, and he is living in a television show as an uninteresting background character.

Due to be erased permanently for bringing nothing to the table, he is aided by a disgruntled employee on the inside, and together, they seek to topple the establishment and give themselves a chance for a different life. It’s instantly intriguing and compelling from the start, setting the stage for an adventure that smartly fleshed out the story from both sides.

As Trevor, you will be navigating American Arcadia like a 2.5D platformer, running, jumping, and overcoming obstacles the best you can. When there’s no way out, you can depend on your inside friend for help. CCTVs littered around the city become your lens into a secondary layer behind the scenes, letting you open doors, move objects, or even activate devices to distract any guards trying to stop Trevor.

Switch over to the hacker, and things take on a first-person perspective, much like Out of the Blue’s previous game, Call of the Sea. From here, you can explore your environments, looking at objects of interest, and partake in a lot of puzzle-solving. Unlike the more conventional platforming that comes with the territory, the hacking puzzles are distinct and probably the best parts of the game throughout. Nothing is ever remotely the same, so you always have to be on your best hacker toes. It’s also surreal to watch Trevor through a screen while you are playing as the hacker through another screen; it’s the good kind of mind-boggling.

This interchange of perspective and gameplay, along with the documentary-style narrative, makes for an engaging affair, but there are cracks to be found within the setup, unfortunately. For starters, the platforming sections are inherently basic, even with the addition of the CCTV control. Trevor is only ever able to run, jump, climb, and pull/push objects. He feels almost secondary, used more as a device to progress the storytelling.

The clunkiness of the CCTV interface doesn’t help things either, as trying to pick the right options using the analog stick can be tricky, especially when there’s a time crunch involved. It’s one thing to need to figure out a section when it comes to timing and planning the route ahead, it’s another to be hamstrung by the controls and repeat failure.

The hacker sections are not immune to issues as well. As fresh as new puzzles can be, it also means that players will never get the depth from increasingly complex ones that use the same foundational mechanics. That moment of discovery and satisfaction at a solve never lasts quite long enough, and you lose that sense of progress as well.

That said, American Arcadia is still a journey worth embarking on, primarily by its story, and also for its vibrant and eye-catching visual design. The details and colours used definitely amplify the retro vibes the game is going for, and you can’t help but smile at just how that shiny veneer hides a much darker secret. The voice acting is also impressive, allowing the various characters to feel much more alive and real, and it helps solidify the unusualness of it all.

As a game, American Arcadia doesn’t necessarily require much from the player. As long as you can get past the control issues and ever-changing puzzles, you will discover a tantalising tale that pulls you right in. When they say television is bad for you, I never imagined it to be in this way, and neither does Trevor, and that makes for something that should keep you glued to the screen for the next few hours.

American Arcadia is now available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.