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Review
Everything about Tangled Tales screams 1980's text adventure, including the manual which feels like it came directly from Infocom. While on the positive side this brought out a lot of nostalgia, it also came with all the drawbacks of the time. Tangled Tales uses its own parser and is reminiscent of Scott Adams' games, with brief and awkward descriptions. To wit:
"You examine a rusty old wheelbarrow. This is the kind often used to remove garden waste, or drunk [sic] from parties. A rusty old wheelbarrow is open and in a rusty old wheelbarrow is an empty glass container."
Also:
"A bottle of water is open and in a bottle of water is nothing." This despite the fact that the bottle is full of water and you can drink from it!
The game itself is rather easy, as it's mostly a series of fetching quests for fairy tale characters, reminiscent of King's Quest only some of the stories have changed slightly, being more crass. I did smirk a few times, my favorite twist being the reimagining of the Three Billy Goats Gruff tale. However, because the parser was quite limited with its syntax I got frustrated early and went to the walkthrough. To my dismay, the walkthrough also had its issues, as abbreviations used there were not always accepted by the parser, and a couple of times the compass directions were wrong. Also, my fairytale kingdom for an undo verb!
The low-res graphics were the highlight.
