During the Cold War, stories of cruelty circulated around the world. This is the setting of “1953: KGB Unleashed”, a point and click game with substance, graphics and a story in a nice package.

The player steps into the shoes of Gleb Nikolayev, a young electrician hired by the KGB to cover a “No Questions Asked” job in a secret bunker under Moscow. Gleb suffers an accident and loses his memory, awaking in a janitors closet to find that the bunker has been evacuated with all the shady signs of an experiment gone wrong.

Key elements of gameplay revolve around searching for items and puzzles that are genuinely hard. The story flows nicely through incremented parts of one puzzle and one search mission. Textures and graphics of the bunker are beautiful and help create the eerie alone feeling needed for this type of game. Gameplay is slow paced, but point and click games have a tendency to be that way, as more player interaction is required to progress in the plot.

In this type of game, attention to detail is key, and this game succeeds in every way. Even things as simple as Soviet propaganda and Stalins picture in a ruined KGB office looks period correct except that its written in English. For an indie game, the sound and dialogue is extraordinary. It sounds like a big budget game and functions like one too.