Barn Finders Review (PC Game, 2020)

Barn Finders is a new PC game inspired by those second hand/antique store reality shows. You know, the ones where people go to auctions to buy abandoned property then try to flip it for a profit? Or visit old locations looking for antiques to buy? Oh, and the old chestnut of aliens being real and dropping off antiques for a specific antique to find because they alone might be the one to save them all.

Yes, Barn Finders is a hidden object/adventure/simulation/sci-fi game about finding and selling antiques. You visit various locations for the price of gas, hunting down specific objects requested by clients over email. Occasionally you have to compete with other sellers at auctions, bidding within your budget to buy a property or storage unit to rummage through. You then return to your store, put the objects for sale, go to bed, and open the shop to haggle with customers the next morning.

There’s something incredibly charming about this game. The graphics are a little dated and the humor is all based on redneck stereotypes, but its heart is in the right place. I never thought I’d play a game where the goal of a level is to find a taxidermied alligator in a jaunty hat hidden somewhere on a haunted swamp estate still dripping in blood from the serial killers who took up residence there. This game goes to some strange and twisted places that hit me just right in the genre fiction sensibility.

The alien wrinkle is a convenient way to justify being able to return to locations. After you first visit an abandoned barn, you see an alien announce that you might be the one to save them. They then decide to leave you more objects to claim every time you revisit a location. You do need to revisit locations to find enough objects to sell to win some of the more expensive bidding wars, so the little sci-fi b-plot of aliens and agents circling each other through the competitive world of antique dealerships is a nice narrative conceit to stay in that world.

Barn Finders has quite a few different gameplay modes contained within. The shop management is what you would expect in a simulation game. You start with a storefront and some basic shelves for limited stock. You purchase an upgrade gun that unlocks the ability to fix up the shop. You can build more shelves, change the walls and floors, and upgrade the overall quality and look of your shop.

Sometimes, you have to clean, repair, or rebuild objects you find in game. These are all done through upgrade stations with slightly different gameplay. You hose down and object while rotating it to clean, hammer an object back into shape using appropriate upgrade pieces you get by breaking down junk, and piece together the missing parts of a more expensive project using the outline of the object at a workbench. These all add a nice bit of variety to the simulation side of the game.

When you sell to customers, you have the option to haggle. Always go for the haggle. There is no penalty for messing up other than losing a few extra dollars on the sale. The haggle system is like an arcade game where you’re trying to hit the button in the bright green zone to win the prize. Sometimes the bar moves slowly, and sometimes you have to hit the bar well ahead of your goal to come close to hitting it. You can let the haggle meter loop however long you need to in order to get into the rhythm of the transaction and earn a few more bucks.

When you’re on site, it plays like an older hidden object/adventure game. You go through the various environments, opening drawers and cabinets to find all the hidden objects in a game. Sometimes, you need to find a key to unlock a door to enter a new area where you have to find just the right power supply or tool to activate another object that lets you get to the final area of the stage. You know, typical 80s/90s point and click adventure territory. All of that works well enough.

The platforming elements are a bit too finicky. It’s incredibly frustrating to have to restart small stretches of these worlds over and over again because you have no real control over your jumping. In one location, there’s a series of stones to cross a lake in a cave. Some of them will drop if you step on them. Even when you identify the right path, you’re going to fall in the water and restart because landing the jumps is a guessing game at best. Similar struggles happen when crossing broken attics or climbing teeter-totters to reach fire escapes. It’s annoying to keep resetting part of a level because you don’t know if a jump will move you inches or feet.

So much of Barn Finders is fun that I can overlook the faulty platforming elements. The game does reset you right by where you failed, so you don’t have to travel too far to try again. The stories built into each location are as rewarding as you let them be. We’re not talking complex hidden narratives at the level of Gone Home or Dear Esther, but you can piece together some cool sci-fi and horror stories by paying attention to your surroundings and looking at the art on the walls.  Barn Finders is a prime example of a game offering so much more depth than expected on concept alone.

There’s a demo (really the first two sites you can visit) you can check out for free in the Steam store before buying that gives you a pretty good idea of how the game plays and if you’ll like it. I highly recommend you try it out.

Barn Finders is available on Steam.

***

Sketching Details is now on Patreon. Subscribe for as little as $1 a month for access to exclusive weekly articles.