Ahead of the Game - My Father Lied lets you point and click your way back to MS-DOS days

• Nostalgic trip down memory lane for old-school point-and-click aficionados
• Mesopotamian-themed narrative
• Find the truth behind your missing father

Hello and welcome to Ahead of the Game, a series where we tell you all about an upcoming game that, despite not being out yet, is available for you to play at the time of publishing. Through this series, you can grab a chance to play games well ahead of their release date, be that through Soft Launch, Open Beta, Demos, or more.

A lot can be said about the nature of point-and-click adventures on mobile - which we touched upon in one of the previous episodes of the Pocket Gamer Podcast - but I've never encountered one as visually nostalgic as My Father Lied, indie studio Lunar Games' upcoming narrative journey inspired by 7,000 years of Mesopotamian history. 

I personally adore the genre, but while pixel-art aesthetics are common nowadays, this kind of realistic 2D-slash-3D look that My Father Lied wields like a weapon so darn well is super rare - at least to me. It uses 360° imagery to piece together each scene you walk into - it's what drew me to the game at first glance, precisely because the vibes remind me so much of 1993's Lost in Time by Coktel Vision.

Even the animations that play as you successfully unlock doors, solve puzzles, and connect strings look very similar - an FMV-esque style that Lost in Time was promoting for itself at the time - and it's a refreshing take on the genre especially on mobile these days.

Okay, now that I'm done gushing about the aesthetics, what's the actual gameplay like? Typical of the genre, you'll point and click your way through mysterious rooms to grab notes, figure out lock combinations, and search through files for clues on getting from one scene to the next. You'll even have to search dead bodies to find what you're looking for, all to unravel the mystery of your father's disappearance.

Each room boasts a truly regional theme, with a lot of historical and cultural references you might even pick up along the way.

It's all got a very retro feel to it, which - for someone like me who puts point-and-click adventures on a pedestal because they're what got me into gaming in the first place when I was a teeny tiny thing back during MS-DOS' heyday - is all it needs to do to get me invested with all my heart and soul.

So, how do you play My Father Lied?