The Day of the Queen

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.