After you're done trying this free game, maybe pick out another from my Perpetual Steam Key Giveaway

Sights & Sounds
- There's an unmistakable charm in the pixel art of this game. It evokes old memories of playing stuff like Monkey Island, Loom, and The Dig. If you've ever enjoyed the look of a LucasArts point-and-click, you're bound to find the detailed settings appealing
- At the same time, it feels distinct. It eschews the front-on 2D perspective for more of an isometric one. While this works favorably aesthetically speaking, it hampers the gameplay somewhat (more on that later)
- The music is excellent for the mood. Someone with a more refined palette will probably have a greater appreciation for the synthetically recreated waltzes and other melodies backing the scenery, but even a pleb like me can still appreciate the mood they help set

Story & Vibes
- The narrative is structured as a frame story encompassing three major acts. It's like The Canterbury Tales, but much shorter and stripped of the bawdy humor
- The frame, in this case, is a fancy masquerade aboard a luxury train populated by masked attendees who don't know quite how they wound up there
- Each act is a vignette in which a specific partygoer attempts to explain the events leading to their arrival to a (suspiciously casual) person sitting at one of the tables
- The pacing is excellent, and the ordering of the acts helps ramp up the unease and dread. Without delving into spoilers: the first act features a difficult social situation in a hotel room; the second, a severely depressed woman dealing with her problems using the most irresponsible laudanum that Victorian healthcare could provide; and the final act tells the tale of an oppressed doctor going to great lengths to increase his healing abilities
- The vibes are satisfyingly creepy and haunting. The whole experience has the air of acquaintances telling ghost stories around a campfire

Playability & Replayability
- From a mechanics standpoint, if you've played one point-and-click, you've played them all. You click on everything, you talk to everyone, and you try to crack unintuitive and sometimes frustrating puzzles with solutions that only make sense to the people who made them
- Remember how I said that all the beautiful pixel art had some downsides for the gameplay? Well, by imitating the visuals of a bygone time, a lot of features get lost. It's difficult to identify progression-vital items when most small objects look like various smears of color, and some items blend in so well with the sometimes muddy-looking floors and backgrounds that you'll spend several minutes pouring over the background for things to click on. Combine those negatives with the usual quirkiness of point-and-click puzzle design, and you have a recipe for multiple frustrating moments
- Not sure if I'll replay anytime soon, but part of me does want to revisit this on a chilly October evening sometime in the future to get the last achievement I missed

Overall Impressions & Performance
- It's a little 2-3 hour narrative-focused indie game, so it won't push your hardware too hard. Ran well on the Steam Deck
- I would be remiss to point out that this game is totally free on Steam. Absolutely worth a shot at that price
- Yet another game I've played that's a reference to one of Italo Calvino's works. I played Genesis Noir last year as well, and know it has a sequel coming out soon. Guess I need to start reading some of his stuff if it's this influential on developers

Final Verdict
- 7.5/10. An excellent point-and-click that manages to cram a surprising amount of story into a neat little package. The bow on top is the fact that you can experience it on any budget

It's incredible that the game doesn't cost a single cent. Sure, If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers is short without much in the way of gameplay, you mostly just run through hotspots without much puzzles or dialogues. But where the game makes up for everything is the fantastic presentation which, despite the reduced pixel visuals, knows how to inspire and the sensational atmosphere which draws you further under its spell from act to act. Whether you are trudging through a rainy, dark mansion or through the labyrinthine corridors of a library. The gloomy atmosphere drips from every corner, supported by a fantastic soundtrack. You almost feel like you're diving into Poe or Lovecraft short stories. And I'm very excited to see what else the developer Dead Idle Games has in store for us.

started to play this game due to brilliant backgrounds and art style, but this game is just a torture machine for ADHD players... god i just can't grasp to enjoy the Point & Click this genre is so boring for me even though i love story-driven games, and this game embodies the worst of this genre by making slow walking and repetitive tasks and with pixel graphic who is maybe 64-128bit very hard to see things, it become even more frustrating to keep playing... i had a rough experience trying just to finish this game even though it's short, which is a shame.

How do you expect your life to turn out? Were there mistakes in the past that haunt you till this day? If on a Winter's Night, Four Travelers explores a cast of characters as they relive their moments before accepting an invitation to a train. Each story diving into a different character, and a different way to go about things. It truly makes for a captivating tale by constantly switching narratives around, and not going on longer than it's needed.

Four Travelers uses a wonderful pixel like art style that consistently makes the motions of the story, characters, and actions all that more impactful. Playing thru the game it truly feels like it could go anywhere, and while the characters are on a train, this story doesn't have rails. Four Travelers uses the mood of a point and click adventure game well as the puzzle solving and sound effects help us better understand each characters actions as we continue thru their stories.

If on a Winter's Night, Four Travelers can be an unforgettable game with the way it can shock players with it's narrative. While I don't think everyone can sympathize with these characters, they all have a bit of sincerity to them that can make them relatable in someway. If you're looking for a sobering experience, you really can't go wrong with this game.

There is so much love stored in this.

Something about this game really hit me hard: It contains a lot of heavy subjects and it treats them with this strange sort of fragile tenderness.
I think at its core, it perfectly illustrates human suffering, grief and isolation. I'm trying to not give anything away as I think this should be played completely blind.
Honestly, I think this might be less of a game and more of an aching wound.
Beautiful.

If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers çok kısa bir oyun deneyimi, 2 saat civarında süren bu pixel art oyununu Steam kütüphanemi karıştırırken gördüm. Ne ara aldım ben bu oyunu diye bakarken beleş olduğunu görünce anladım. Öylesine açtım oyunu ne olduğunu bilmeden ve şaşırttı.

Oyunun ne olduğunu cidden bilmiyordum ve sırf sadece meraktan açmıştım, başından kalkarım sonra demiştim sırf vakit geçmiş olsun diye ama oyuna kilitlendim. Ne türde bir oyun derseniz click & point puzzle oyunu ve hikâyesi ile de öne çıkıyor. Çünkü aynı isimli bir romandan esinlenme. 4 act'tan oluşuyor ve ilk act çok basit başlıyor. Sadece belli başlı nesnelerle etkileşime geçip, kararların önemsiz olduğu seçimler yapıp hikâyeyi ilerletiyorsun ve çok kısa bir act. Tüm oyun dizaynı bundan ibaretse yandım demiştim.

Bari hikâyesi iyi olur umarım diye devam ettim ve act 2'de anlatılan hikâyenin konsepti ve melankolik atmosferi çok çekti beni. Onunla da kalmayıp çok uğraştırmasa da bulmacalar da sunmaya başlıyor oyun. Ve bu bulamacalar ileride zorluk olarak derinleşiyor. Bulmacalar çok fazla değil çünkü oyun zaten aşırı kısa ama var olanlar iyi vakit geçirmeyi sağlıyor. 2 tane bulmacanın cevabı ise biraz kafa yormayı istiyor ve onlar da ayrıca hoşuma gitti. Metinlere ve diyaloglara dikkat etmen lazım bazı cevaplar için. Cevaplar göze sokulmuyor.

Her act ayrı bir hikâye bu arada. Farklı karakterlerin farklı hikâyelerini oynuyoruz. Act 1 çok kısa ama o kısalığındaki etkisini verebilen bir hikâye mesela. 2 ve 3 asgari bir uzunlukta ve o hikâyelerin anlatımına ve atmosferine çok çekildim. Çünkü tam olarak sevdiğim temalar. Yalnızlık, pişmanlık, gerçekliği görmezden gelme, saplantılık, geçmişindeki günahların kefareti v.s. bu tarz konseptler ele alınıyor. Ve bu konseptlerin sunduğu atmosfer ve anlatım sırasındaki sürreal sahneler ile çok hoş sunulmuş oyun.

Bazı mekânlar rahatsız edici, bazı mekânlar iç karartıcı, bazıları ürpertici ve bazen de sürreal. Karakterlerin psikolojilerini ve alt dünyalarını yansıtan sahneler ile verilen depresif ve iç bunaltıcı bölümler cidden iyi ayarlanmış oyunda. Beni kaptırdı en azından. 2 ve 3. act'ın hikâyelerini çok sevdim ama en çok act 2'deki hikâye beni çekti. Saplantı ve gerçeği reddedip escapism yapmaya çalışan melankolik hikâyeleri çok seviyorum ben. Müzikleri ile de güzel desteklenince hepten kapıldım.

Peki sorunlarım oldu mu? Oldu tabii. Öncelikle karakterler çok yavaş hareket ediyor. Mekânlarda ne yapacağım diye oraya buraya sık sık gitmek istediğinizde uzun uzun izliyorsunuz karakterin yürümesini. Bu sıkabiliyor gayet. Bir de 1-2 bulmacanın daha iyi dizayn edilmesini ummuştum sadece. Bir de seçimler gereksiz.

Kısacası bu oyun eğer türü seviyorsanız gayet hoş bir 2 saat geçirtebilecek ve belli bir kalite sunabilecek hoş bir oyun. Bedava olduğunu da hatırlatmış olayım yine, ben gayet keyif aldım geçirdiğim vakitten Hatta bazı kısımları beni iyice çekti içine.

7.5/10

Super fun 2 hour game worth the play! It's a very high quality free-to-play game, but I will def be picking up the supporter pack : ]

The story is interesting and the puzzles are super fun. Literally my only critic is that I wish it was longer. As a bite size experience, its a super fun time and I have a hard time wondering what else could have been done to polish the experience more - I highly recommend!
(Note: there are some heavy themes, so if you are sensitive to specific things, it might be worth it to look into some warnings for the title!)

A mysterious masked ball on a crowded train, a person questioning three strangers about their disturbing life stories.

Liberally inspired by a Calvino novel, Four Travelers is a gorgeously presented free point and click adventure structured in three acts: a homosexual man living under 1920s fascism, a schizophrenic woman in interwar England and a black doctor returned from WW1 to impact with racism among his colleagues. All three take a significant turn for the macabre, especially the third one.

It in more than one way reminds of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, though not nearly as messed up or rough around the edges.

It's exquisitely written and animated, with its only real downside being the puzzles, which are very very few but also fairly obtuse, relying more on rote memorization than logical association. You might for instance need to remember someone's remarks while looking at photographs in order to play three records in the correct order, or examine plants in a greenhouse in a certain sequence based on the movements of an apparition. The narration is so good that you might find yourself wishing that were all the game had to offer, foregoing the unnecessary puzzle gameplay aspect entirely.

With all that said, this is a must play for horror fans or anyone interested in seeing social commentary done properly in a videogame.