The Day I came back

After an intriguing intro text, we find Alex where we would expect him to be, given the ending of the previous game in the series. And once again, he needs to save his husband, Paul.

I don’t want to give away too much of the story, but can divulge that we get to experience the world from some very different perspectives. We also get a glimpse into Alex’s childhood, and see (and play) some scenes that have shaped his life and personality. Both from a gameplay and story perspective, this is one of the more original games in the series so far.

It’s also the funniest one. There’s a lot of humour in both the room and object descriptions, in the situations and NPCs encountered (my favourite one, from The Day I stabbed Stalin, returns!) and from comments from the parser. There are also many references to earlier games in the series, so you really need to have played them to get the most enjoyment out of this one.

But like in the rest of the games, there are implementation issues. Most of the objects named in the room descriptions are not implemented. And there are a few cases where more synonyms (for both verbs and nouns) would have been welcome. In general, some more polish would be nice.

But all in all, this is one of the better Alex and Paul games – and it’s my favourite so far.