Description

Cold War has split the world in two, both figuratively and literally. The Great Divide spans across the globe with an impenetrable mess of concrete and barbed wire sandwiched between the two blocs. You are Leonard Nimby; stone-faced former top agent of IM5, hot on the trail of a shrink gun stolen from you by a villainous mayoral candidate on the eve of a fateful election.

Splittown is a point-and-click adventure game inspired by 90s classics such as Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max Hit The Road. You'll crack confounding puzzles, stuff improbable amounts of items in your pockets, and engage in humorous dialogue with a colorful cast of characters on an adventure that will push your wits to the limit.

Features

• More gags than you can shake a stick at
• Multi-layered puzzles in a highly interactive world
• Imaginative world inspired by the Cold War
• Large cast of characters with unique motivations and backstories
• Graphics evocative of the golden age of point-and-clicks
• Beautiful in-game maps for travel between locations
• Eclectic score combining ska and rock

Splittown in Media

“The gameplay, visuals and humor feel very much like a love letter to Lucasarts classics. The UI is simple and easy to use (much like the Sam & Max Max UI), the gag rate is high and there’s lots of fun little surprises and easter eggs to discover. There are even some optional objectives to complete…”

“...it’s as if there was a get-together featuring the artists of LucasArts, 90s Nickelodeon cartoons, and Salvador Dali got together and did some acid. Presumably. The perspective in the game is unique and very reminiscent of 90s point and click adventures.“

“I really enjoyed my time inside its world of spies, appreciating small nods to classic games and the inspirations drawn from them.”

About All-Seeing Eye

We're Mats and Juha, two passionate gamers who bonded over our love for the pixelated worlds of the 90s. We've spent countless hours together dissecting what made those games so special, and we're determined to recreate that magic for a new generation.

When we started developing Splittown in 2017, publishers were in no great rush to fund a project like ours. Instead, we've decided to invest our own time and money in creating a game that is true to our vision. We aren't looking to imitate something from the 90s, but instead imagine what a long-lost game developed in our childhood could have looked like.

We can't believe it either: Splittown is out of Early Access!

You can pick up Splittown 1.0 right now at -20% discount as part of Finnish Games Week 2025. Fair warning – we're not planning any discount deeper than our launch discount for at least the next 12 months, so if you've been on the fence, now's the time to jump in. No need to wait until Christmas sale!

What's New Since Early Access

You all provided wonderful feedback during the Early Access period, and we listened. The full list of changes is too long to share here, but some of the highlights:

• All new adventures with Otis. Many of you pointed out that Nimby's best buddy Otis felt underdeveloped during EA. Good news! There is now a whole DLC-sized chunk of content (in a new part of the city) where you get to unravel more of the secrets of Splittown with him!
• All-around beefier main story. With 40 new dialogue branches, 4 new characters and more than 700 frames of new animation, the adventure feels more polished and interactive than ever before.
• 30+ achievements. Find easter eggs, hidden gags and cause irreparable damage to the citizens of Splittown all in order to satisfy your digital hoarding instinct.
• Item highlight and in-game hints. This was a tough one, but so many of you asked. Not everyone has the time for endless pixel hunting anymore (adult responsibilities, amirite?) Give the Wimp Phone a call when you are feeling stuck, or toggle on Wimp-Vision™️ to highlight interactive items.
• Controller and Steam Deck support. New on-screen glyphs automatically update when switching between a controller and a keyboard. All puzzles have been adjusted to be completeable on a controller as well as the mouse and keyboard.
• Unlockable making-of content. Nearly a hundred pieces of early art, in-development screenshots and other curios for you to find. Collect duckies hidden around Splittown to unlock these extras!
• More hotkeys, more convenience. When playing on mouse and keyboard, you can now use WASD and the arrow keys to navigate menus and interactive scenes. Every inch of the UI has been made slicker and more fun to use.
• Native Linux, always. We heard our Linux fans loud and clear: no Proton shenanigans this time around!

Oh, and a metric ton of bug fixes. Like so many that it's not even funny.

Shoutout to our QA Tomi, who joined the project at the tail end to help us manage all of this.

None of this would have been possible without all who supported us in EA by writing bug reports, commenting on the Steam forums, here on Itch, or on our Discord channel! From the bottom of our hearts, thank you.

What's Next After 1.0?

For the month of October, we'll take a moment to recuperate and rest. The crunch to get 1.0 out the door has taken a toll. Our team will still be on standby to answer your questions on Steam, Itch, and our Discord, and to issue hot fixes if any issues arise, but besides that updates will likely be sparse.

After the launch, we do still want to provide some free content additions to the game, including a fully voiced developer commentary mode. Look forward to that as a free update towards the end of the year!

Thanks for being on this journey with us. Now go play some Splittown!

Hey everyone! We've got some exciting news to share with you all – Splittown is heading into Early Access on January 16th, 2025. This has been a long journey for us, filled with late nights, countless puzzle designs, and a lot of passion to bring you something that we hope will remind you of the magic of the 90s.

If you've been following our progress, you know that Splittown is all about capturing the feel of those classic point-and-click adventures. Remember Day of the Tentacle or Sam & Max Hit The Road? That's the spirit we're channeling, but with our own twist. You’ll get to step into the shoes of Leonard Nimby, an ex-agent on a mission to recover a stolen shrink gun – all while navigating a world literally divided by the Cold War.

We’re not just bringing back retro aesthetics – we’re bringing back the heart of what made those games unforgettable: intricate puzzles, witty dialogue, and a world that’s begging to be explored. And let’s not forget the soundtrack – we’ve mixed together spy themes with a dash of 70s rock to set the mood just right.

Now, why Early Access? Well, as a small team, we believe that getting the game into your hands early will help us fine-tune the experience. We want to hear your thoughts, see where you get stuck (or laugh out loud), and use that feedback to make the final version of Splittown something truly special.

Early Access will include all the main story content, and at $19.99, we hope it’s an accessible entry point for both veteran adventurers and newcomers alike. We’ll be working closely with you all to polish up the side quests, add more interactions, and squash any bugs that might sneak in.

So mark your calendars for January 16th, 2025. We’re almost there, and we couldn’t have done it without the support and enthusiasm of our friends, fellow developers, and the adventure gaming community at large. Let’s make Splittown the game we all know it can be!

I've worked on Splittown for about eight years now. My co-developer, Juha, joined around the two-year mark, and we've collaborated ever since. That's nearly a decade dedicated to creating a game that captures a sense of magic from our childhood in the 90s.

Meanwhile, the adventure game genre has experienced its ups and downs. Some have declared the genre dead, while others claim it's more alive than ever. There have been reimaginings, revivals, and throwbacks. Many creators who inspired me to start game development have produced follow-ups (spiritual or otherwise) to their original, genre-defining titles. There have also been new adventure games, like Disco Elysium, which have shook me to my very core and reminded me of why I love video games in the first place.

As I’ve seen these games come and go, I’ve asked myself: is Splittown even necessary anymore? What point is there left in making a point in trying to do an authentic, throwback 90s point and click adventure? Hasn’t it been done, and by the people who are most qualified to do it no less?

I'd be lying if I said I haven't experienced moments of doubt. However, playing contemporary adventure games has only strengthened my resolve. Splittown is necessary. Splittown is special.

I can't shake the feeling that many developers in the genre today view point-and-click games, even at their peak, as fundamentally flawed. This perspective leads modern iterations, even those by the genre's original creators, to feel apologetic about the mechanics and tropes of the genre.

I think this is appealing to a popular opinion that is simply untrue. I believe point and clicks were a part of an evolutionary strand of video games that encompassed other computer-dominant genres like immersive sims and computer RPGs, where world-building, storytelling and immersion were the core of the experience. And they were wonderful.

Did we abandon this strand because the games were bad? No. We moved away from it because these games struggled with the limitations of the consoles at the time. In the late 90s and early 00s, as games began to enter the mass market, these genres were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We humans often bias towards believing newer things are better, but that's not always true. Splittown is our chance to explore what could have been if we had continued down the evolutionary path abandoned years ago. It's like loading a save file from the mid-90s and choosing a different route.