Perils of Man

[Jenni]

If you have an iPad, pick Chapter One up, it's free and it's fantastic. It's a point and click adventure game by IF Games with a game design by Bill Tiller and Gene Mocsy of Autumn Moon and with dialog written by Mocsy as well (but the story is written by someone else).

 

The art style is clearly not Bill Tiller's (which is odd, since his art is so magnificent). I would have loved to have seen some of beautiful handdrawn backgrounds, although this game is full 3D but it's well done (which I guess shouldn't be surprising, since IF Games is the game division of the Swiss animation studio Boutiq). Plus, the characters are voiced well, and the music is top notch.

 

As for the game itself, even in Chapter One, the puzzles are some of the best I've played in adventure games in years. They feel like LucasArts puzzles (and are a nice easy to medium difficulty, getting progressively harder as the game goes on, which is nice to see in just the first chapter). And, the story is excellent so far (it's financed by the insurance company Swiss RE, so it's about risk and consequences, but the story is handled well, so it never feels like an advergame). The dialog is also much crisper than the Autumn Moon games.

 

I really can't wait for the remaining six chapters. Oh, and they expressed interest in porting the game to Android, Windows, OS X, and Linux if there is enough fan interest in the ports. So, let them know you want the game for your platform of choice. I know I'll be making a shout-out for a Windows version once their forums are up and running.