Ratings and Reviews by Walter Sandsquish

"Toonesia" is a light, pleasant hodgepodge of Warner Bros. cartoons, which effectively recreates the world of 2-D animation. It manages to squeeze the desert of Wylie Coyote and the Roadrunner, the woodlands of Bugs Bunny, and an abandoned jewel mine into a small setting. In the weird world of 'toons, this makes sense.

But, while Weinstein's writing is solid, and his programming is usually transparent, the game has some problems. One nasty bug will kill your player character if you pay attention to it. The east-west directions are reversed in the description of the cliff walls surrounding the Mesa. Even in a 'toon, this doesn't make sense.

And, while Weinstein did capture the essence of the Warner Bros. characters, he failed to make any of them very interactive. The most interactive one, Dizzy Duck, is also the most frustrating one. Oddly, Dizzy will react to Elmo's actions, but to nothing that Elmo, the player character, says to him! In the Warner Bros. world of hyperactive, clever, sarcastic characters, this just doesn't make sense either.

Despite these weaknesses, "Toonesia" is still an agreeable game. The puzzles are fairly simple, and entertaining, to solve, once you catch onto their theme, which shouldn't be difficult in a 'toon-sensical game.

A cheerful take on the "dog ate my homework" excuse and the "can't teach a old dog new tricks" adage, "A Very Old Dog" follows the player-character's attempts to housebreak a grad student's science experiment.

This experiment is a playfully menacing pet, and your attempts to train him involve diverting, but straight-forward, puzzles. Unfortunately, a bug in the game's auto-naming feature can break the game, so name your new pet yourself, and you'll likely enjoy this little romp.

The bleak humor of "HeBGB Horror" fits the frequently-frustrated actions of the player character. The PC may try to emulate his music idols, who all have names like Blitz and Yngvie, but Mayer ensures that the PC's successes will go awry, just as his world will get weirder.

In New York's Bowery district, occult horror and punk music intertwine. Weirdly angled floors and walls enclose sagging, decaying furnishings, used by pierced, drugged characters, who gather to listen to screeching and wailing music.

Atmosphere and wit are plentiful in "HeBGB," but synonyms are not. A more robust vocabulary might help a player better navigate the peculiar problems a wanna-be punk rocker might have with eldritch horrors.

Though most of "HeBGB's" puzzles are clued, many are also obtuse. You may, for instance, have problems understanding the relationship between dried cheese and frayed telephone cords, or distinguishing between the uses of a pin and a pen, throughout this game.

Nevertheless, "HeBGB Horror" is weirdly fun and strangely satisfying.

"Labour's Letters Lost" portrays Edwardian England's sense of class and propriety properly. The player-character's friend is, after all, quite embarrassed that he meant to call your father, instead of you, for help. And neither he, nor anyone else, would like to admit they would wear eye glasses, though it might be helpful if they would. Speaking of the help, they would never allow that they might be interested in their employer's business, and the PC would never intrude on them by going downstairs to see if that's actually the case. You won't even ask about the particulars of the letters you're searching for until it can't be avoided.

But, the PC will take the kind of proper notes that will help the player sort through what can't be said as well as what has been. The notes, as it turns out, are the real focus of game-play.

Unfortunately, Huang's implementation isn't quite as proper as his characters. "Talk to" is described as a more general form of interrogation than "ask about," but "ask about" does not even reveal the information that "talk to" does. This makes interviewing frustrating, because "talk to" chooses the subject for you and "ask about," which should allow you to get to the particulars you're interested in, works very infrequently.

Fortunately, these coding problems don't make the game unplayable or even particularity unpleasant. "Labour's Letters Lost" is still a suitably proper example of a cozy mystery.