Apopia: Sugar Coated Tale Review

Apopia: Sugar Coated Tale is a story-rich adventure game developed by Quillo Entertainment and published by Happinet on the 3rd of March. Initially, the title seems to just be cute and fun, but not all is as it seems — there’s a deeper mystery at play here.

Quick disclaimer before I dive into the review: according to Apopia’s AI Generated Content Disclosure on Steam, “The preliminary version of some audio sound effects and soundtracks were generated by generative AI before being refined to the final version”. Now, I’m assuming they’re telling the truth, and in that case, I personally don’t mind too much if that’s the case, so I will not be deducting score for that — if you have a problem with how they used AI, it’s entirely your right to not buy the game regardless of what I say here.

So, the story starts off with our protagonist, a human girl called Mai, climbing a mountain towards her mother. After a little bit, she has to get past a gap to get to her, but falls down into it and lands in a strange land called Yogurt. Inside Yogurt, she meets a pink cat, who she names Nico, and learns that all non-rabbits are banned from the land by a new tyrant, BOSS. When Nico and her almost get captured for not being rabbits, they are rescued by the rightful princess, the rabbit Moly, who protects everyone persecuted by BOSS at her home, which she calls Big House. Together, she plans with Mai how to unlock the only gate leading outside of Yogurt, so everyone could be free again.

Once safe in Big House, Mai goes to sleep, and that’s when the darker, more mysterious parts of the game start. Mai immediately hears her mother in her dream, telling her a story and having her come forward to her. Once she reaches her mum, who is coloured entirely in red, a rhythm mini-game begins, in which Mai is told by her mother not to press the correct buttons when the marks appear.

If you listen, you are told by a blue-coloured voice to not listen to her and have to try the mini-game again. Once you do, she tells our protagonist that you shouldn’t have resisted her, and that it’s only fair she does this to her after what Mai did. Once that whole mini-game is over, you are met with the blue voice — another version of her mum, but good. Here, Mai learns that she is special and can enter people’s memories and thoughts, called their Dark Worlds, and that right now she is in her own Dark World. Blue Mom also claims that Red Mom is a false memory, but whether or not that’s true is something you have to discover on your own…

In both Yogurt and the Dark World, the gameplay is pretty similar: a simple adventure game in which you solve some puzzles and interact with objects. It’s not bad at all, but might not be everyone’s cup of tea, since it has a lot of fetch quests and the puzzles are usually very simple. There are also mini-games, which are actually a little tough and might require a few tries to get past, but they aren’t super common, and most of the time is spent looking around and interacting with things.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of bugs in Apopia, but thankfully, nothing major. To start a new game, I had to relaunch a few times, but once it worked, it kept working. Pausing causes some issues with character voices not playing once you unpause, and if you’re playing with a controller, make sure it’s connected to your computer before launching the game.

But how does this title look? Well, not half bad and pretty fitting for the theme. When in Yogurt, Apopia is very colourful and cute, a perfect match for the silly jokes and the overall light-hearted theme of this section of the game. But, in the Dark World, things look very different: every drawing is simplified, Mai is drawn in black and white, and almost everything looks slightly off. The dichotomy is really cool and it makes the Dark World sections that much scarier and more off-putting.

The soundtrack is pretty nice and just like every other title, some of the music is memorable and other parts aren’t. I would say, though, there are a few tracks that repeat too often, such as the one that plays when the situation is tense — I think I can play it by heart from how much I’ve heard it already! The sound effects are pretty standard, and character voices are similar to the system used in Celeste, which is normal for indie games, but in my opinion, a little annoying, especially when a character is high-pitched.

So overall, even though Apopia: Sugar Coated Tale has some shortcomings in its gameplay, and a lot of inconveniencing bugs, it’s still a pretty enjoyable experience, especially if your focus when playing videogames is the story. So all in all, I think this title is definitely worth a try, especially after some post-launch patches for all the bugs.