You’d be forgiven for thinking that point and click adventures went the way of the dodo but apparently no one has told German developer Realmforge Studios. They were formerly Boxed Dreams and have now been acquired by publisher Kalypso Media. While the genre may be hopelessly dated this is a well made title with a decent level of polish and it conjures memories of the Monkey Island adventures and Grim Fandango. The problem is these games were popular a long time ago now and while this title is well made it doesn’t offer anything new.
You play on a series of backdrops which are actually rendered in 3D although it makes no difference to the actual game-play. You click on items to investigate them or use them and the plot is advanced via lots of voice acting. The HUD is very simple and easy to use. If you want to try out an item in your inventory you just click on it to select and can then click on options in the environment to see if an interaction can be found. You can also combine items in the same way. Your entire inventory is a series of boxes along the bottom of the HUD.
Each environment has a puzzle or a series of puzzles to solve before you can advance. Generally this means putting together the right combination of items and using them in the right way or manipulating the characters you meet by giving them the right items. You can also have conversations with other characters in which you get to choose from a range of responses and you can influence them to do what you want by selecting the right combination.
Most of the puzzles are logical enough and you can generally advance without too much retracing of your steps. The fact you are able to switch between characters to solve some situations, such as Ceville’s escape from his jail cell, is a nice touch. Some of the puzzles are not so logical, for example who knew that parsley would put a fairy to sleep? However with adventure games you know that randomly trying every combination will work eventually, to be honest this is one of the reasons I’m not really a fan of the genre. The other is the fact you tend to wander back and forth looking for objects you have missed and happily Ceville has a system whereby you can press the space bar in each environment to highlight everything that can be interacted with.
