Ratings and Reviews by Karl Ove Hufthammer

This is a short (playtime: approx. 30 minutes), puzzle-based game. There’s a book fair in town, but the Cheshire Cat, the mascot of the local board and card game club, has gone missing. And apparently, the club can’t organise any future events without its mascot, so you need to find it (I’m not sure why this is supposed to make sense, but according to the game, it’s ‘a matter of life and death’).

To find the mascot, you have to complete a series of simple puzzles. They are typically of the form ‘an NPC has object Y, which you need, but they want an X for it, so you must first find an X’, and would be much more interesting if the objects (X and Y) were better integrated in the story; in this game, it often feels like they could be exchanged for any two random objects.

The game is somewhat beginner-friendly. The game starts with listing some information on how to play IF, including a complete list of verbs needed to play the game. But note that there aren’t any hints or a walkthrough built into the game. Most of the puzzles are logical, but one of them is made (unnecessarily) difficult when an object you need to examine is hidden from the room description after completing a certain (needed) action.

Scoring systems aren’t as popular in IF these days, but can be fun, especially for beginners. In this game, each important action gives you a point or two, for a total of 20 points. There’s also a nice ‘fullscore’ command, giving you a description of all point-scoring actions that you have performed.

‘Save the Cheshire Cat!’ is the author’s first attempt at translating an Italian game (‘Salvate lo Stregatto’) into English. The translation is frequently a bit ‘off’, but is easy to understand, and written in a simple language, suitable for kids. But note that the actions you need to perform include both (poorly motivated) stealing and violence.

According to the blurb, the game is a ‘comedy text adventure’. And while it is a simple, light-hearted game, it is, in my opinion, not a funny one: there’s almost no actual humour (perhaps some was lost in translation?). And while the game is quite well implemented, and can be fun to play, especially for beginners (due to the simple puzzles), neither the story nor the puzzles are very interesting in themselves.

After the previous game’s confusing mess of sci-fi tropes, we’re back at Alex and Paul’s house. Alex has ordered a Neptunian deathhound (!) for Paul’s birthday, and the puzzles involve travelling to several minor locations to fetch the appropriate protection for readying the house for the new, quite ferocious, pet.

The puzzles are a mixed bag. Some of them are simple and well-clued, one has a confusing hint (that I still don’t understand), but is easy to solve by brute force, and one seems almost impossible to solve without a walkthrough or hints (and don’t make much sense in the game world, either).

As we have come to expect, the game has a somewhat spotty implementation and quite a few spelling mistakes (though far fewer than the first games in the series had). But I didn’t find any major bugs.

There’s some humour, making the game more enjoyable. And for the long-time fans, there are also references to earlier ‘Alex and Paul’ games. In my opinion, the series is best when it takes place in a (pseudo-)realistic setting, and I’m glad the game didn’t continue on the prequel’s clichéd sci-fi time-travelling-stuff-that-hardly-makes-sense path.

All in all, this a short and simple, puzzle-based game. Not a particularly good game, mind you, but about par for an ‘Alex and Paul’ game (hence the two stars). I look forward to playing the sequel (hinted at by the game’s ending).

Oh no, it’s ‘The Day I shot Alex’! :O On the upside, this means that we have a new ‘Alex and Paul’ game to play – the tenth in the series. And for the first time, we get to play Alex’s husband, Paul!

After a brief, interactive prologue, we’re in very familar surroundings, a party at Alex and Paul’s house. And everything seems absolutely perfect at first. But then we notice that Alex is missing, and the domestic story quickly takes a darker turn, more towards science fiction (cf. the previous episode, The Day time stood still).

Unfortunately, the game soon starts to feel like a long-running science fiction series – the type that has run out of original ideas several seasons ago. Cue lots scientific-sounding mumbo jumbo, some ‘applied phlebotinum’ and various other tedious plot devices. There are a few puzzles, but the actual story is often conveyed via too long info dumps.

So what about the puzzles? Are they any good? Well, they mostly make sense, but they’re not very original, and the implementation isn’t always fair. For example, one puzzle late in the game involves an action that physically makes perfect sense, but whose solution involve a different world model interaction than what is typically expected in parser-based interactive fiction. Another example can be found quite early in the game, where you can only advance the plot by using an exit that is 1) not listed in the status bar (which now, helpfully, lists rooms exits), 2) isn’t mentioned in the room description and 3) isn’t even one of the cardinal directions!

The best of the ‘Alex and Paul’ games are the ones that have lots of humour. This one is not one of those.

As usual for the series, the game ends with a sequel hook. Unfortunately, it’s more of the ‘let’s throw yet another villain into the mix’ type, which doesn’t give much promise for interesting story development. But, while I think the present game is mostly for die-hard fans, I always look forward to playing a new ‘Alex and Paul’ game. :)

This game takes place right after the action-packed ending of The Day of the Queen. And as hinted at in that game, it involves time travel. Time travel games can be fun, if cleverly constructed. Unfortunately, this one is not. Most scenes feel quite random, and the various time periods don’t create an interesting whole; they seem to only exist to provide objects for the game’s puzzles.

And the puzzles themselves don’t advance the story much. But they’re also not very interesting as puzzles; they seem to exist mainly so that there are puzzles in the game. Luckily, they’re all easy to solve, either by logic or by simple trial and error with the objects you have (some actions only make sense after you’ve performed them). There was, however, one puzzle I rather liked, and which was quite clever (but well-hinted, so that it wasn’t too difficult to solve).

This is a relatively short game, compared to the previous two games in the series. Therefore, one might perhaps expect some polish? Unfortunately, this is not a well-polished game. For instance, in one room, all objects mentioned in the room description were unimplemented. And the one object that could be interacted with could only(?) be discovered by exploiting a bug in the parser ((Spoiler - click to show)the response to the command ‘take all’ mentions the object).

One thing I like about the Alex and Paul games is the humour (puerile as it undeniably sometimes may be). In this game there’s less of it, and it often falls flat.

All in all, this a perfectly playable game, with simple puzzles to solve, but it’s not one of the more interesting nor funny games in the series. Play it if you like the series and are curious about what happens in the story; skip it if don’t.

Sharkmen, spirit possession, romance and golf carts – it’s time for a new Alex and Paul game. The Queen of Hurts and Maladies is trying to take over the world, and it’s up to you (and your husband) to stop her. But first, you have to get out of the airplane bathroom!

This is a longish game (compared with the earlier games in the series), with plenty of puzzles. Luckily, they’re simplified by being mostly isolated in separate scenes, so there’s always a limited number of objects to interact with. And for once, I managed so solve all of them on my own, except for some fiddly bits in the end sequence. The difficulty is easy-to-moderate, but it’s easy to overlook clues, or to fail to provide the exact syntax that the game expects.

The Day of the Queen is also a fun game – especially if you have played the earlier games in the series. Several characters from the earlier games make an entertaining reappearance. Much humour is also provided by the absurd situations encountered, and by comments from the narrator.

As usual, there are plenty of spelling and grammar mistakes, various implementation issues and a lack of synonyms. And the final action sequence could have been better implemented. I couldn’t find any serious bugs, though. All in all, an entertaining, slightly better-than-average Alex and Paul game, with mostly reasonable puzzles.