Odd Town Review – Tiny Conspiracy Adventure

When your car breaks down during your travels, you normally get it fixed at the nearest town. Odd Town subverts this formula by having the town “repair” your car but eventually lose sight of it. To continue your journey, you must explore the town through first-person sandbox exploration. Developed by The Flying Baguette and published by Hyperstrange, escaping Odd Town is just as frustrating as it would be in real life.

As a traveler on a journey, your car blows a tire and won’t go much farther. Fortunately, there’s an auto repair shop nearby and you should continue your journey without a problem once your car is repaired. However, you are suddenly drawn into a random phone call that informs you that the town is keeping you fenced in. To leave the town, you must find the original caller and uncover a conspiracy to get the means to escape.

The story sounds intriguing and while it looks normal on the surface, it quickly becomes apparent that something isn’t right. Delving into the truth behind the town is engaging at first. However, the plot is simple and you will probably know where it’s going after you settle in. Most of it is told over various quests with predictable ends. While I found some of the plot threads interesting, most of it didn’t hold my interest enough to care. I found myself wondering why I didn’t just walk out of the town.

The simplicity carries over to the gameplay, where you explore the town to solve the mystery. Missions involve stalking people, breaking into houses, or bypassing locked doors. You may need to fight people or shake them down as part of your tasks. To earn money, you can do odd jobs or steal from stores at night. If police catch you committing crimes, you must run away or end up in jail. Should you escape, you get a wanted status that you can remove by changing clothes.

It was nice to have the freedom to engage with the town as I liked; there’s no time limit on quests and you can pursue any activity you like at any time. Having that freedom made it easier for me to prepare for missions or test something out. Need to shake down a random civilian? I can obtain money or provoke them into combat. Need to learn how to escape from the police? Try different paths to successfully evade capture.

The problem is that there isn’t much to do in town. While you need a certain amount of money for quests, there’s little to spend it on other than save items or clothes. After you buy (or find) every tool you need, money doesn’t have much use. I didn’t find any useful upgrades to purchase or new items to acquire. Once you have everything, there’s nothing to do but continue with the story.

Without much to do in town, I found Odd Town rather lifeless. Despite being a sandbox where you can try several things, there simply isn’t enough to keep you occupied. Eventually, I was earning money for the sake of it rather than doing anything meaningful. You also can’t do much more than attack random people or run away from cops; as much as I tried looking for other activities, there genuinely is only so much fun you can make yourself.

Even the missions have very little variety, often moving from one place to the other. Once you reach the final missions, things do become slightly more interesting. However, the win conditions are vague and involve experimentation that would’ve been useful throughout the game. At the end, I didn’t find any aspect of Odd Town that truly stood out. It felt like a constrained version of a crime game that never goes beyond what it needs.

Odd Town has an intriguing premise with a town where there is more than meets the eye. Treating the town like a little playground is the biggest appeal. Unfortunately, the map isn’t big enough to truly enjoy that benefit. Many mechanics don’t work well or aren’t utilized properly to truly reach their potential. Enjoying Odd Town may be difficult once you realize what little this odd town actually offers.

Victor reviewed Odd Town on PC with a provided review code. This review is based on the version of the game available at the time of writing and our score will not be changed.