Tchoup, is your average Goblin adventurer called on once again to help King Balderon, who this time has lost his orycterope Riri (that’s an anteater to you and me). With his friends Perlius and Stucco, Tchoup sets forth to solve puzzle after puzzle in their quest to find the king's pet...

Gobliiins 4 is the latest incarnation of the Gobliiins (yes it has three i’s, though I have no idea why) series. The game is a puzzle adventure aimed at a younger audience, however to my crying shame I got stuck on the first screen and had to email the game's creators before I could move forward. If you’re also stuck on the first screen give your plant a carrot - I leave it up to you to work out where you’re going to get one of those from.

The game is a point and click affair, part puzzle, part adventure. The characters are amusing, even if some of the puzzles solutions are a matter of randomly clicking everything in sight until a solution presents itself, of course that could just be me, because it seems that children have an ability to look for lateral solutions which obviously atrophies in adults. I did get a nine year old to play it who, annoyingly, was better at the puzzles than I was. Don’t you just hate children?

You play the game as essentially three characters. Tchoup, our hero, can carry stuff but is weak; Perlius is a wizard and can levitate objects; and lastly Stucco is strong, if a little stupid. Each of the puzzles requires you to use the characters various strengths to solve the puzzle rooms.

Muriel Tramis and Pierre Gihodes, a French artist, created this wacky, amusing and somehow compulsive 3D universe. I’m not usually a fan of point and click adventures, mainly because some of the solutions may seem logical, but actually don’t come from anything you can deduce from your environment, and truth to tell there is an element of this in Gobliiins 4, but not so much that a bit of trial and error won’t get you out of most scrapes.

Even just exploring your environment can creates some amusing events and I think that, ultimately, this is the game's strength for both young and older players. The game is imbued with a level of charming playfulness, from the friendly 3D animated goblins to the small funny asides that happen on almost every screen, there is always something to do while you work out how to get to the next screen.

9

Charles Packer