Erica: Review - Gamescom 2019

Erica: Review - Gamescom 2019

Review for Erica. Game for PlayStation 4, the video game was released on 19/08/2019

Nobody expected it and perhaps few of the insiders knew it, but the fact is that on the first day of Gamescom 2019, during the Opening Night Live, Sony announced the release of Erica and at the same time it appeared, as if by magic, available for purchase on PlayStation Store at a price of 9,99 euros.


This new title, developed by Flavourworks, studio co-founded by Jack Attridge and Pavle Mihajlovic in 2015, e produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe, represents a highly interactive gaming experience, based on video sequences immersed in a story. In simple terms an interactive movie, exclusive to PS4.


The London team, also taking advantage of the PlayLink technology, wants to replace the joypad with the smartphone, transforming it into main interaction tool. The normal gestures performed on the touch screen of the mobile device facilitate different types of approach e allow you to break down any type of barrier, both social and physical, making a usable and usable video game for everyone.

Let's not forget that a joystick requires a good dose of skill and manual skills provided by years of experience in the sector, reserving its use to one qualified subjective audience. The smartphone, on the other hand, it is a tool that requires a negligible learning time e it engages a wider audience of individuals in a friendly manner, also due to its daily use.

We had the luck and the honor of elaborating a review on Erica, almost simultaneously with her announcement and testing all the details of this new title launched during Gamescom 2019.



A movie or a video game?

Erica, the new Flavourworks title launched at Gamescom 2019, is a interactive thriller that combines a similar Hollywood film production and a concrete "digitally touch" gaming experience, all pervaded by a 'disturbing and distressing atmosphere accompanied by one soundtrack composed by Austin Windory, the artist behind titles such as Journey and Assassin's Creed Syndicate.

Erica: Review - Gamescom 2019

The protagonist of our story is Erica a young woman who finds herself involved in a mysterious murder shrouded in mystery and that for some reason it is linked to his family history and traumatic events that left their mark on his childhood.

Old and new acquaintances will contaminate the flow of events that the protagonist will have to go through, in a sort of perennial limbo where the discovery of the truth and the unmasking of lies represent the only way out towards the history that connects the past with the present.

Choose your story 

A concept already anticipated previously sees in Erica, the unprecedented title of Flavourworks launched at Gamescom 2019, proposed a system of multi game controller modes given by the pad of the DUALSHOCK 4 controller or the touchscreen of the mobile device (with Erica app installed, compatible with iOS 9.0 and Android 4.4), which are used to choose, in an incisive way, the various personal s proposed by the ramification of history.


In order to use your smartphone, you will have to transform your PS4 (following the directions proposed on the game's home screen) in hotspot and connect via smartphone, identifying the new access point just created among the wireless networks to connect to. The unfortunate thing is that yours mobile device will have to stay always on and connected to your PS4 in order to use this feature proposed in Erica, all at the expense of battery, which will drain from your gaming sessions. Do you remember the mirror scene that appeared in the previous video? This is the backstage, or rather, the use of the smartphone instead of the traditional pad.


History, albeit linear, it takes on various facets also based on the emotions and moods that the sequences played transmit to you. The natural consequence of this process is that the evolution of the plot will reflect a little bit of yourself and therefore you will all become Erica, the protagonist of the game.

The decision-making moments, which are proposed at the end of the various dialogues that occur in the interactive movement, are perfectly integrated into the conversed sequences, but with a not unlimited time. Who sleeps does not catch fish.

Directly from Gamescom 2019, Erica looks like a interactive thriller with very intense dialogue sequences but this does not represent the core of this video game. Interaction is a fundamental component in Erica: we can interact with the surrounding environment, place the needle of a turntable on a vinyl, eliminate the condensation formed on a mirror and leaf through a book.


Even the simple peek through the doors can be managed by the gesture of the smartphone or the pad but be careful, always do it with caution and without being seen.

Touchvideo and cinema

Erica is one philosophical bet. The London-based company has as its core business that of designing interactive narratives completely revolutionizing the genre, through a multimedia technology that allows you to recreate a film inside a video game and vice versa.

All this has a name, “Touchvideo”, a proprietary patent of Flavourworks. The latter allows you to recreate interactive live-action experiences that can be lived without major difficulties, thus opening the way to a non-niche audience such as gamers.

Do you remember when in June, in full E3 climate, Keanu Reeves, interviewed by BBC Newsbeat, said, with regard to videogames, these words: 


“I don't think they need legitimacy. If anything, I'd say it's the exact opposite. It's the games that influenced… let's call it Hollywood… But the games probably started together with Hollywood. I think these two technologies have influenced each other. "

Erica is the clear videogame expression of this thought.

Erica: Review - Gamescom 2019

Competition in this newborn genre this year is quite high with The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan, the new title developed by Supermassive Games and produced by Bandai Namco, ready to invade the living rooms of millions of gamers. 

Erica, the new PS4 title presented and launched during Gamescom 2019, has all the credentials to compete in this one philosophical and interpretative battle of the videogame world and get on the winners' chariot.

Erica: Review - Gamescom 2019

We did not believe the promises made by Flavorworks with its Touchvideo and, being the devil's advocates, we let a non-expert try the game. The result was excellent because, without explaining anything about the game and delivering only the mobile device in the hands of the aspiring gamer, the latter was able to continue in the sequences played, almost naturally. Even if the plot and the cast of the characters do not present exceptional elements, at the level of videogame technology we are faced with something damn effective that could cloud the timid advance of VR technologies. Chapeau!

► Erica is a Visual Novel game developed by Flavourworks and published by SIEA for PlayStation 4, the video game was released on 19/08/2019

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