R

The size is wonderful for PDAs, but I wonder why the PC version is also PDA-sized. The tiny little rectangle in the middle of my enormous screen was a little distracting.

So, Scott Adams nostalgia. No points lost for that. I actually have fond memories of the pure object-oriented puzzles of the time, when quite often the only description you really needed was the name of the object. I was not disappointed with regard to the puzzles, which were as much as might be expected, though hardly ground-breaking. The coding was competent.

What did annoy me, though, was the inability to examine certain objects: the response was, more often than not, simply "OK". I suppose that comes with the form, and I am spoiled. Still, even if it were par for the course, I think that a lack of object descriptions does not add to the game in any way, particularly as not all objects go undescribed. Had none of them been described, I think I would have accepted it as part of the design and moved on; but as a number of objects are, I could not help but run into the same canned response ("OK") many, many times, which was annoying.

Another thing was the fact that the return to the ship was essentially a maze. Over open waters, from which you can see your ship at all times, yet somehow you cannot fathom the location of the ship relative to yourself. If there were issues with a pattern of ocean currents pushing me away from my intended destination, it would have been nice if such a thing were mentioned.

The pirate voice was cute, at least. It's not a bad game, but it doesn't seem to have a lot going for it.

Honey-nut cheerios, milk. Arr.