The trend in newer RPGs ("Pillars of Eternity," "Divinity: Original Sin 2," etc.) is to fill your health back up between battles so you can focus on the tactical details of each battle; "Sunday Gold" doesn't have that; it is a battle of attrition, a battle of attrition, a battle of attrition. The heist in these three chapters is a war of attrition. Managing party members' strength, stress, action points, and supplies, solving classic point-and-click adventure item-collecting puzzles, and battling corporate security, it's like an old-school hardcore RPG crammed into a Sierra adventure. The battles themselves are so-so, but the added constraint and intensity of managing dwindling resources benefits the puzzle-solving. [The story is "Final Fantasy 7" itself. A big corporation and its secret labs destroy an over-industrialized city, and a ragtag band of freedom fighters return to their secret base beneath a dive bar with a loner's worthless man and a bruiser with a heart of gold, all in the vein of a classic video game set in 1970s neo-sci-fi.

I'm a sucker for comic book art, but what really makes "Sunday Gold" exciting is that ruthless war of attrition. Characters spend the same Action Points (AP) in both exploration and combat modes. When they finish a turn of exploration, they get a chance for a random encounter. In other words, if you finish the battle with no AP left and end the exploration turn early to refresh your points, you may find yourself in a loop where another random encounter occurs immediately.

JRPG-style combat is otherwise typical. Janken resistance system, the need to wear down the enemy's armor and time your attacks to the best of your ability. The persistence of health and AP between combat and exploration adds an element of long-term strategizing and makes the whole thing more exciting. I have found that timing the battle in such a way that I end it with maximum health and AP for the next exploration phase is more important than ending the battle as quickly as possible. Pyrrhic victory is forbidden. If you finish the battle with low health and AP, you will be badly hurt in the exploration turns that follow.

Sunday Gold's addition of scarcity and stress to classic adventure gameplay is refreshing in today's field. It is an innovative game in a similar vein to Citizen Sleeper, an adventure/RPG from the same year 2022, where you are tasked with maximizing your daily dice rolls in order to live your best life on a space station. The two games represent a different path from PC Gamer's longtime favorite "Disco Elysium," which blended the RPG and adventure genres; while "Disco Elysium" incorporated build crafting and skill checks, "Sunday Gold" and "Citizen Sleeper" are all about thinking on your feet and managing scarce resources efficiently. [They are point-and-click adventures, albeit hardcore RPG resource management of the kind found in "Baldur's Gate" and single-digit "Final Fantasy. It wasn't like "Monkey Island," which I played as a kid, where you clicked everywhere and tried every action until something new happened. Instead of relying on brute force, I had to think through the puzzle and examine each action.

About two-thirds of the way through, there is a set piece that epitomizes the tight and harrowing puzzle. The party is trapped in a Star Wars trash compactor and must find four keys hidden in the room. There are about 25 action points to spend before the trap is triggered and the team is wiped out, but there is a lot more to do and problems to solve. The keys themselves can be found on a high shelf or locked behind an electrified door. The room also contains some valuable loot, including a shotgun for the DPS flank. However, there is also a smattering of junk action, such as shoulder checking doors and fruitless shooting. On my first attempt, I threw everything at the door and missed. I got myself together, reloaded, and rethought the puzzle.

Sunday Gold really got my gamer instincts going early in the game when I searched through the corpses for an ID card. My greedy impulse was to loot health potions from every pocket, but the feel of the corpses naturally drained my character's morale meter (getting too low introduces intentional interface glitches and strict time limits on combat decisions). It also turned out that this brutally assassinated corporate stooge had no little key to boost morale, no natural armor amulet, and no enchanted dagger. Once I had found the key card that would be crucial to the plot, I should have ignored my perfectionist instincts and gone my own way. Sunday Gold punked me, dangled a carrot, and slapped my hand as I reached for it.

"Sunday Gold" incorporates a bit of the old Sierra moon logic into some of its puzzles. There's the classic adventure game where the machine has a missing valve and you have to collect it from elsewhere before you can screw it up and use it for a valve-like purpose - seriously, who keeps this stuff anywhere but where you screw it up?" when the puzzle is limited to one room, or when you need the part you need. not always show up well when you have to turn back to collect them.

This occasional muddle has led me to believe that the progress obstruction glitches I encountered were actually my own inability to solve the puzzle. This difficult sequence involving lasers and coolant tanks plunged me into the ironic hell of point-and-click adventures: I had done everything correctly and exhausted all options, but the last piece of the puzzle had glitched. My character would bark "I can't do it now" when I tried to shoot it as requested. I thought I was missing a prop or boobah to complete the puzzle and that the LucasArts gods hated me, but after clicking on everything in the room five times and reloading my save, it was simply bugged.

Sunday Gold's expressive, impressionistic character designs and '70s "conversation hole future" really drew me in at first. While the style is somewhat wasted in the game's first two acts, the corporate office building and the Umbrella Corporation's secret laboratory with direct catalog delivery, the Dive Bar's home base and Knives Out's novel mansion in the final act make good use of the setting. I think there was a lot of juice left in those oranges.

Sunday Gold's script is, on average, almost perfectly net neutral for me. There are some great parts in the game, such as the horrifyingly over-the-top evil corporate motivational posters scattered throughout the office section, and the worldbuilding is cheeky and fun. The game takes place in an extravagant and cruel future London, owned by a zombie-dog-racing-obsessed, "visionary" billionaire who looks like a Hollywood producer from the 1970s. But the conversation is completely room temperature. The profiles of the unpretentious con man Frank, activist Sally, and high-flying anarchist hacker Gavin are great, and the striking visual design provides a compelling archetype, but they communicate in either bland snark or straight information dumps. There is only so much that can be communicated in a cool visual style.

Storytelling aside, "Sunday Gold" is a successful proof-of-concept example that effectively brings two genres together to create something new and in some ways better. It doesn't have the emotional or philosophical weight of "Citizen Sleeper" or "Disco Elysium," but it does have something really important: tactical, menu-based combat.