Fugdale’s Funhouse

Object: Solve the puzzles by choosing the correct actions in order. NOTE: Link above is not direct, you must click the ‘play now’ link on the page.

Review: These bears will have you laughing and thinking out loud. A crack team of fuzzy bear investigators has a few challenging tasks ahead of them. You control at least 4 bears in this game. Each level provides you with a complete sequence puzzle for you to solve. When you place your cursor over a bear you will see one or more symbols which represent actions that bear can take at that moment. For instance, your bear might connect to the internet to disarm a camera or he might use his sword to stab an enemy bear. As your progress through the game different actions will reveal themselves.

As in many other point-and-click adventures, you must discover the correct sequence of choices in order to solve the puzzle. If you do the wrong thing at the wrong time you will fail the mission or cause a lot of havoc for yourself. The first mission starts off in a bank, where a gang of bank robbers has captured several hostages. You must find your way into the bank and knock off all of the kidnappers to rescue the hostages. Be careful, along the way you will have to climb through windows and trigger certain events, otherwise you will get stuck.

The puzzles provide a challenging adventure without seeming too impossible to solve. Most players will encounter set-backs early. If you make errors, the captain back at the headquarters will give you advice and let you know when you need to restart the game. The bears all talk to each other and say funny things via speech bubbles above their heads. Once you start to remember the proper sequence of events you can make your way through each level further.

The sound effects and cute animations provide moments of humor throughout each level. I enjoyed the fact that each level provides all the information on one screen, unlike most point-and-click adventures. You won’t have to explore all over the place trying to locate a hidden key, but rather, you can examine the entire area and map out a war plan. Still you will find several points in the game where progress gets impeded. I sometimes found it difficult to determine if I needed to start over or just investigate a little further. Due to the animation sequences between each action, you can’t just speed through the game upon each replay, so prepare yourself for a leisurely pace each time you work through it. As you finish each level, you will advance to another mission. I haven’t played through the entire game yet, so I don’t know how many levels the game includes.

War Bears has a similar feel to the Grow series of games, one of which I have previously reviewed here. All the action takes place on screen and the order you trigger events determines how far you progress in the game. So whip out your BSI (Bear Scene Investigation) tools and get to work.

Object: Deactivate the bomb in the package within 15 minutes or die.

Review: This point-and-click adventure by Tim Betrand seems a little daunting at first, but with a little bit of deductive reasoning, you can make it out alive. The game itself doesn’t involve a long drawn out series of clicking and finding objects like some adventures. Instead you have one major task…to get inside the box and find a way to deactivate the bomb. You only have 15 minutes of real time to accomplish this task.

You will mostly have to put your number logic to work to make it through. The notes and etchings inside the box provide you with most of the information you need to deduce the next step, but it still takes a little thinking and a bit of trial and error to make it through in time. Starting with the combination lock, you immediately will thank yourself for all those games of Mastermind, but the game will test other areas of knowledge including multiplication and binary numbering systems.

If you don’t make it through in time, you will blow up, but you can always try again. Another unique feature of this game is that each time you play, the combinations and some of the puzzle solutions change. So you can’t rely on memorizing the sequences, but have to start fresh each time. In that sense, the game has some replay value, although once you’ve done it, you probably won’t need to go right back and do it again. The game won’t drag on forever. You really can solve it in just a few minutes if you put your mind to it, so give it a shot and see if you can work under pressure to disarm the package.

Just stumbled across this new game that looks incredibly fun. I don’t think it’s released yet. But I thought I’d point it out to folks. The artwork/design is really cool, using detailed grayscale imagery and silouhettes. Very cool. I will review it when it’s released.

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