Ratings and Reviews by Karl Ove Hufthammer

This is an entry in a SpeedIF competition, meaning that it had to be written in two hours or less, and under some rather strange rules (among other things, the story had to involve a mail-order course, with bonus points for including the colour scarlet or a cardboard cut-out of Graham Nelson). Thus, don't expect a complex plot or realistic characters. Really, the game's only strong point is the humour, which is sure to at least get a few smiles out of you. As an example, here's my favourite passage, taken from the opening description:

This is a very long road. Houses are on either side. They're standing still, while the road runs north and south.

If you like this example, I do believe you will enjoy this short game. But besides the humour, it has has very little to recommend it (hence the 2-star rating).

The Kissing Bandit is extremely linear, and basically runs on rails, with little real interactivity. What saves it, tough, is the hysterical writing, which are sure to make you smile throughout the game.

There are no puzzles as such, and you don't even have to pick up anything during the game (but do examine your inventory!). While many 'original' verbs are implemented, several items mentioned in the room descriptions are not, and the autocompletion could be smarter. For instance, typing 'climb' outside a tower offers the not-so-helpful (but somewhat amusing) completion 'climb (the maiden)'. The author does acknowledge the somewhat spotty implementation, caused by lack of time before the submit deadline, and it would be nice to see an expanded and improved version released.

All in all, I think the humour and the overall cuteness of The Kissing Bandit does make up for some of its shortcomings, and since the game only takes about 10 minutes to play, it's well worth spending those 10 minutes.

You're spending the weekend with grandma and grandpa on their small, old, run-down farm. There's nothing much exciting happening, and the farm doesn't even have electricity, so it looks like it is going to be a long and boring weekend. But as a game, it's actually rather enjoyable.

There is no strong main objective (perhaps except making grandma happy again), and there are no time limits or ways of getting the game into an unwinnable state (except dying), so the gameplay revolves more around exploration. The writing, though nothing to write home about, isn't bad, and the game actually succeeded in making me feel like a kid having fun exploring the old farm and the surrounding area.

The puzzles aren't very sophisticated; they're more of the 'fetch a pale of water for grandma's soup' type, and mostly not to hard. The game features short built-in hints, and the list of hints change when you move from room to room, and as you solve other puzzles. Even so, I did get stuck at one time, and had to resort to the walkthru. (The basics of what I had to to do was clear, even before looking at the hints, but exactly which command to use was not obvious, and the result of a similar action had a not very encouraging outcome.) So even sometimes the mechanics of the gameplay did disturb the story, it mostly worked well.

Before finishing this review, I'd like to add that for people using an interpreter supporting graphics, there's a very nice picture of the farm when you start the game, and a picture of a sunset when you quit or finish the game. These are the only graphics featured, and while they add a nice touch to the experience, they are in no way necessary for enjoying the game, so do go ahead and play it even if your interpreter doesn't support graphics.

To conclude, I'd like to think of the time spent playing this game as a rather enjoyable day on the farm.