Shadows on the Vatican: Act 1

Shadows on the Vatican: Act 1 - Greed is a point-and-click adventure from Italian developer 10th Art Studio, loosely adapted from David Yallop's non-fiction book "In God's Name," a work that examines alleged corruption deep within the Catholic Church. You play as James Murphy, a former Vatican priest who abandoned his collar after witnessing his mentor's murder in Africa, returned to Chicago, became a doctor, and then got pulled back to Rome when his old friend Cristoforo is violently attacked and left in a coma. What follows is a five-hour investigation across more than ten Roman locations, chasing disappearing briefcases, money laundering trails, and whispers of a conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of the Church. The game is built around classic left-click-to-interact, right-click-to-examine controls, with a top-edge inventory bar where you collect and combine objects. James also carries a notepad for clues and a laptop he uses actively during the investigation, which is a small but humanising detail. There is a saint-birthday cipher puzzle that genuinely earns its keep, and a point-and-click car chase that is essentially trial-and-error. Puzzles lean easy overall - the friction mostly comes from unclear objectives rather than genuine logical challenge. If you skim through dialogue impatiently, you will hit walls, because critical hints are buried in long conversations with no way to replay them. Visually the game is a 2.5D hybrid: hand-drawn Rome backgrounds that are quietly gorgeous, layered against 3D character models that look noticeably stiff and dated even for their era. The real star of the presentation is the comic-book cutscene artwork, drawn by award-winning illustrator Daniela di Matteo, which has a crispness and personality the in-game characters simply cannot match. Voice acting is uneven - James holds up, but several supporting characters (including a mysterious woman introduced near the end) land with a flatness that is hard to ignore. The soundtrack, though, is genuinely well-composed and carries the Roman atmosphere in a way the animation cannot always manage. Here is the honest caveat you deserve before buying: Act 1 is an extended prologue. It ends just as things start to move. The conspiracy is sketched but not revealed, the second protagonist is introduced but barely developed, and the credits roll right when the story finds its footing. If you come in expecting a self-contained episode, the cut-to-black will sting. But if you treat this as the first chapter of something with real ambition, the mystery is genuinely interesting, James is likeable company, and Rome is rendered with enough love that wandering its side streets feels worthwhile. It is the kind of small, handcrafted game that deserved more attention than it got - earnest, imperfect, and oddly hard to shake once it hooks you on its conspiracy.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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