Freeware Game Reviews

This is a game that's quickly gained a lot of fans in the adventure gaming community and it's easy to see why. You play a goyle (sorry, ghoul) called Mortia who lives in the Land of the Dead. (Yeah yeah, so that sentence is an oxymoron. Deal with it.) She goes to the amusement park (or what passes for one in the Land of the Dead - a "Carnage-val") and ends up winning a goldfish at a darts game. Nothing unusual about that, you may think… except this goldfish is alive! No-one actually knows what this means, or at least no-one will admit to it. Mortia however is determined to find out, and to keep her goldfish whom she names "Spooks" happy, smiling (as far as a goldfish can smile) and alive - whatever that means.

This first game by Erin "The Ivy" Robinson is a visually striking game, with everything being in greyscale - apart from things that come from the "alive" world, which are in colour (such as Spooks and the water he lives in). Suitably haunting music plays in the background as you float around the playground, hair swaying nicely in the breeze. You can have your fortune told by a giant eye, go dizzy from watching the "Scary-Go-Round", and talk to a fallen angel. The real delight of Spooks is the dialogue, which is constantly witty and amusing. Our Mortia is an extremely sarcastic ghoul you see, and isn't afraid to let everyone know. There is some repetition of dialogue you've already had, but if that happens you can just click through it.

The game isn't all that big but it leaves a longer-lasting impression than most due to its uniqueness. The puzzles are generally pretty straight-forward, the biggest problem I had with the game is that when you move the mouse across the screen, there is no indication of when you're over an interactable object. (Usually the name of the object would be shown somewhere or the mouse cursor would change, but here nothing). This did stop me from liking the game as much as I would have as it's a bit of a personal bugbear. This is also slightly compounded by the stylistic graphical style, which works very well but sometimes it's tricky distinguishing objects (which wouldn't be a problem if the above problem wasn't a… um… problem.) This doesn't detract greatly from the game, but it's something that if corrected in Erin's next game (which I'll be looking out for!) along with a longer game could result in a truly excellent freeware adventure.

One you get near the end of the game you'll also be treated to some very nice touches in the graphical and environmental features, and a very surprising ending! (Well okay it won't be that surprising to everyone - I'd pretty much guessed most of it but others have certainly been surprised by it! :-D) The way is clearly paved for a sequel too so we can only hope it will be even better than this one, which is possibly the best aventure game treatment of the Land fo the Dead since LucasArts' brilliant Grim Fandango!

Pros

Cons

Verdict

Graphics: 7
Sound: 6
Playability: 8
Longevity: 6
Overall: 6.5

Please link to this page if you quote from the review.

Screenshot:

Talk about this game, request or give hints on the Forum

Back to reviews list