Reviews by Jim Kaplan

Play it if: like me, you have a passionate appreciation for the work of Monty Python and would enjoy seeing an effective adaptation of one of their better-known sketches.

Don't play it if: you're one of those people who never really understood the appeal of Monty Python, or are feeling a bit short on patience - because you may spend a couple of minutes sharing Mr. Mousebender's psychosis-inducing frustration.

Cheeseshop is an IF rendition of the Monty Python sketch of the same name. As a result, it's fun and not too ambitious: puzzleless, at most five minutes in length, and chock-full of reliable Pythonic humor.

Something about the scenario - a man wanting to buy cheese from a shop which appears not to stock any - works bizarrely well for IF. In the original sketch, Mousebender's failure to acquire the cheese he wants is a source of humor for the audience; here, the player is additionally asked to share in his frustration. It's a nice, subtle twist. Maybe it works a little too well - the process of mechanistically typing cheese varieties can wear on you a little, though the game's responses to your attempts do add a sense of progression - but it's effective.

There's not much to say about a game of this length, but it succeeds in terms of what it's trying to be: a well-executed interactive adaptation of a Python sketch.