The Critter Chronicles tell the story of how adventurer Nate Bonnett and Critter, his hairy sidekick, first met, all set before their appearance in Wilbur’s and Ivo’s adventure in The Book of Unwritten Tales. Enjoy a thrilling and hilarious point-and-click adventure in the fantasy world of Aventasia...

Point and click graphic adventures have been around since the days when the PC first started getting decent graphics cards. In those early days humour and invention were paramount as the graphics were generally enjoyable, if cartoony. Their popularity never really faded, even with the advent of more graphically spectacular games.

Nordic Games have enjoyed success in this genre with their previous, well received, title The Book of Unwritten Tales, so much so that they have released a prequel, The Book of Unwritten Tales: The Critter Chronicles, which has central to its plot the cute critters from the original game.

Set against a fantasy backdrop you start the game as Captain Nate on his new airship, which was recently acquired under dubious circumstances. Unfortunately the former owner disputes Nate’s captaincy and sends a bounty hunter to reclaim the ship. The first order of business is to get rid of his unwanted guest. Nate has to search the ship, interacting with objects.

This involves a lot of exploration and combining of objects. Most of the puzzles have logical explanations, although some will need you to bend real world physics, but it’s a lot like a crossword puzzle, in that once you get used to the slightly twisted logic the puzzles which follow are easier to crack. Of course, if you’re up for a challenge the game can be played on the ‘Hard’ level, which mixes things up and increases the difficulty of the puzzles.

Some objects are placed there just for fun; others can be combined to solve the overall problem of firing the cannon. Humour plays a large part in the game and this is augmented with the stylised graphics. Nate’s good fortune in figuring out how to drive off the mercenary is short lived, when he crashes his new ship.

Here he meets Critter for the first time and discovers that the cute, furry creatures are under threat, after the first couple of story segments you can switch between Nate and Critter to solve more problems. Conversations are handled in must the same way as the problem solving as you choose from conversation options which appear in a pop up menu.

Parody is a strong element in the game with references to various modern media and this is found in both the environment and in the witty voice acting. The game is well scripted, harkening back to the golden age of point and click games.

The game is an all-round entertaining experience, which should provide hours of fun and head scratching.

8

Charles Packer