Wonder and Woes in a Weird, Deadly World
PROS
- It's like Space Quest but much, much weirder. Floating islands, weird creatures, a labyrinth of cheese (not really). There's a lot of variety.
- Not only is the world is filled with wonder but you are free to explore it.
- It is based on DOSBox and not ScummVM which guarantees that your authentic experience won't be tarnished with newly introduced game breaking bugs that some of the more complex adventures ported with ScummVM, have.
CONS
- The game exemplifies everything people dislike about parser adventures - rigid parser that doesn't take into account many of the ways in which you can phrase something; navigating labyrinthian paths over deadly pits with extremely unwieldy controls, etc. This is mostly a design problem because other similar games aren't so unfairly annoying.
- The main problem of the puzzles is not that they don't make sense (most of them do) but that there's no feedback when your attempts are rejected. When the character tells you "I can't climb this" it doesn't mean he can't climb this, it means that he won't climb this instance of it in this particular spot. Without the spoilery screenshots above I wouldn't have guessed how some of the puzzles are solved. Same for "I can't push this" or "I can't cut this" - yes he can, it just doesn't apply to this particular rock or tree. Similarly, it turns out that the NPCs want gifts from you that they never even hint at being interested in.
- At the time when I played the game didn't have the original manual included. Instead, the players get one page of obvious statements that have been written very recently. This means that the players will miss some lore, a map, instructions about verb shortcuts and keyboard combinations for easier typing that can't be guessed (such as L-look, AB - ask about, Ctrl-X, Ctrl-D, etc.). You should try to find the manual online.
VERDICT
I liked the game a lot despite its problems because I really like this type of games. It was fun and engaging to explore.