If you’re anything like me, anytime you’ve heard the phrase “eighty days,” you’re suddenly filled with a sense of dread because that might mean summer vacation is almost over and you’ll soon have to go back to school. Or, on the opposite side of that coin, perhaps you’ve had quite a memorable summer vacation because you spent the first eighty days of it traveling around the world. 2015’s 80 Days focuses on the latter of these ideas, with a healthy dose of science fiction and steampunk technology thrown in. I’ll now transcribe my thoughts on 80 Days into an efficient itinerary for your information.

I’ll start by addressing the question I suspect many readers might have: Yes, 80 Days is loosely based on the 1872 novel, Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. 80 Days’ central plot and characters are much the same as those of the novel. The premise is that a wealthy Englishman named Phileas Fogg accepts a wager from his posh friends at the Reform Club, the wager requiring him to circumnavigate the globe and return to London within eighty days’ time. If Fogg succeeds, he’ll win £20,000; if he fails, he’ll likely face financial ruin.

You play as Jean Passepartout, a Frenchman who has recently been hired as Fogg’s valet. Your job is to accompany Mr. Fogg on this globe-trotting journey and tend to his needs as best you’re able. Your primary duties during the voyage will be things like discovering routes and arranging transportation between cities, reserving a hotel room in each city you visit so that you and Fogg can sleep comfortably, and generally making sure that Fogg is happy, healthy, and comfortable. You’ll have easily accessible in-game means of figuring out how well Fogg is doing at all times.

However, you’ll frequently have to leave Fogg’s side and explore each city you visit looking for routes to new cities. Otherwise, your journey might come to an abrupt halt just because you don’t know how to reach new destinations around the globe. You’ll have to balance doing those parts of your job quickly and efficiently with making sure Mr. Fogg is well cared for – you know, the thing he’s mainly paying you to do. I find that I quite like having to maintain that balance as I play 80 Days, though I’m not quite sure why I enjoy that so much.

Another important piece of that equation is making sure you maintain a positive relationship with Mr. Fogg while you two are on your voyage. You’re his valet, after all, so you really shouldn’t neglect your duties so much or behave so inappropriately that your employer ends up hating you. 80 Days will often tell you when your relationship with Fogg improves or deteriorates based on the dialog choices you’ll spend most of your time selecting. I think, over time, I’ve figured out a general pattern in terms of what I can do and say that Fogg might like or dislike.

As far as I can tell, you’re not required to visit any specific locations on your voyage so long as you circle the globe and return to London before eighty days have passed. I really enjoy having the option to visit any cities to which I’ve wanted to travel in real life so long as I’m confident I have the time and money to spare. I simultaneously appreciate that 80 Days allows me to accomplish my goal in as efficient and straightforward a manner as I can manage for the sake of winning that wager. Having this much autonomy is quite nice.

What might be my favorite aspect of 80 Days, though, is that even if I lose the wager and don’t make it back to London in time, I’m presented with the option to try the whole thing again as soon as I return to my starting point. Heck, if I think an attempt is doomed to fail even before my time limit is up, I can restart my run whenever I desire from the pause menu. This gives 80 Days that “just one more run” mentality that often keeps me drawn to games like this.

I’m also really fond of the ways 80 Days injects science fiction concepts and steampunk technology into its core gameplay loop. I’m a total sucker for that kind of thing. To name a couple of examples, you’ll frequently be able to travel between cities via such methods as airships, hovercraft, and submersible passenger trains. There’s a good chance you’ll encounter an army made entirely of steam-powered automatons controlled by musical instruments in place of the usual human soldiers, and maybe even smooth-talk your way into becoming a commander of that machine army if you choose the right dialog options.

To my delight, I’ve found very few things I dislike about 80 Days thus far. My only real complaints are that navigating the world map with the mouse often feels awkward, and that I wish there were more than two rather broad options for manually passing in-game time without engaging in any activities when I’m not traveling. Admittedly, playing 80 Days does make me feel foolish for having virtually no knowledge of world geography, but I can hardly blame the game for that. Still, that’s something you might want to keep in mind if you’re like me in that regard.

I have absolutely no problem recommending 80 Days if what I’ve said in this review has piqued your curiosity. You don’t have to be the least bit familiar with the source material to get a good deal of enjoyment from 80 Days, especially if you like games with many intertwined elements of randomness and/or you relish that “just one more run” mindset I mentioned earlier. I still fully intend to complete the journey at least once without spending so much money during the process that Mr. Fogg winds up in crippling financial debt as a sort of personal challenge. Tally ho!

A PC review copy of 80 Days was provided by Inkle Ltd. for the purposes of this review.

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80 Days

$12.99

7.5

Score

7.5/10

Pros

• Creative uses of sci-fi and steampunk concepts.
• Freedom to retry your main goal as many times as you want, whenever you want.
• Quite a bit of enjoyable humor and personality.
• Very engaging core gameplay loop.

Cons

• Having a decently firm grasp of world geography will definitely help.
• Certain mouse controls feel awkward at times.