Ratings and Reviews by madducks

I never understood how "Winter Wonderland" got first place in '99. For a puzzle-piece it does have it's charm, and it is very well implemented, but I found the map flat, and mostly just unsatisfying, the character interactions were shallow and grating. The treacle story and prose have been commented on in other reviews, and indeed, it only exasperated my distaste for this one.

This might be of interest to puzzle aficionados and children, but probably too difficult for the latter and bit ordinary for the former.

"Toonesia" by Jacob Weinstein is a parody of the old Warner Brothers cartoons. True to form it includes some of the settings that characterized Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, and Daffy Duck cartoons. It contains appearances from all of the above and a Tasmanian Devil, though all the characters are renamed. Notably, you play Elmer Fuld, captured by Bud Bunny.

This game had it's clever moments and successfully emulated the attitude of the source material and contains some pretty clever puzzles. Unfortunately this game also shows its age with very sparse implementation. I felt like the author passed up a lot of opportunity to write funny room descriptions in the style of Elmer Fudd, but alas, most of what happens in the text of the game is mere reference to the style of the cartoons it's based on.

The map alternates wildly between ecosystems (in one room you're in the forest, in the next, a desert mesa), but this could be accredited to cartoon logic. However most of the Warner Brothers cartoons I watched as a kid would feature one or two of our favorite characters and would keep a fairly consistent setting, maybe switching between the woods and interior of a house, at most. Most of the puzzles existed blatantly outside of the story, just as set pieces.

This game is based on a pretty neat premise with some potential for innovative work, overall though I would've hoped for more. I think most modern players would find it pretty underwhelming.

The most striking feature of "Dreary Lands" is the awful spelling. I can't imagine that it was proof-read even once. Towards the end there is a nearly game-stopping bug, but the game can be completed.

I was going to say quite a bit about the writing, which had some promise, but the following quote from the about text of the game pretty much removes the need to add anything to this review:

"I know this game is not very good; It even disappoints me.
[...]
I am not going to release a better version of this game, though."