Who would have thought that Polonius wore a giant dome suit, Rosencrantz and Gildenstern were eaten by a giant octopus, and Claudius sucked at electric guitar. As it turns out, mif2000 knew this, and worked it into their cartoonish and off-the-wall re-telling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Story

You probably already know the story of Hamlet, and if you don’t I suggest enriching yourself with that first, because the story found in this game merely hits some of the highlights, while drastically altering the tale in other ways. In other words, I seriously hope you’re not hoping to play through this to help you ace that Humanities midterm you’re dreading.
Instead, you play as a time traveler who manages to put Hamlet, the true hero, out of commission, and thus must advance the flow of events in his stead.  A heady task indeed.

Gameplay

Hamlet is a pure point and click adventure.  There is no inventory to manage or optional places to explore or expansive areas to map.  You simply have to click the right things in the right order to progress through the linear story.

Puzzles are the name of the game, and in Hamlet, the puzzles you’ll find range from fairly simple, to moderate difficulty.  The puzzles that consisted of logically working out the specific rule set and using that to work through the solution were the most fun to me, and I found those to be immensely satisfying.  Otherwise, the answer can usually be found by carefully observing the scene and looking for hints.  I did find, however, that there seemed to be red herrings in a few areas that led me down the wrong path in attempting to solve something.  Or perhaps I’m missing out on a big secret.  I was a bit disappointed in that some parts played out with me clicking wildly.  Sometimes clickable points were fairly small and hard to see.  I especially dislike puzzles whose solution is to click on the same thing repeatedly until the outcome is different.  If you’re going to do that, at least give me some sort of visual to mark the progression of my efforts.

While most puzzles I reasoned through on my own, or persevered through trial and error, there were a couple that left me scratching my head.  Luckily, for the few puzzles I did need a bit of a kick in the butt to solve, there is a hint system available.  What I did like, was that the hints in Hamlet don’t generally just outright tell you any answers.  They give visually illustrated clues to push you in the right direction.  The hint screen is available simply by waiting for a timer to elapse, which is handily marked in the bottom right corner as a circular filling question mark.  While this is serviceable, I was much more happy with system found in another recent adventure game, Machinarium, which had you playing a brief shoot-em-up mini game to prove you really needed the hint.  Also, if you do wait for the hint screen, and find after closing it that you want to check again, you will probably be annoyed to find that the hint screen timer resets when you close the window, making you wait again.

Another interesting thing that Hamlet touts, is “epic boss battles.”  These are obvious when you encounter them, but they’re really just glorified puzzle screens like the rest of the game.  While they don’t add much more to the gameplay than is already present, I’m not going to argue with more fun puzzles to solve.  The final battle, however, I found to be a bit anti-climactic.

Audio/Visual

The visuals found in Hamlet are one of the title’s strongest points.  The cartoon caricatures are well drawn and animated.  The world feels alive in vibrant colors and textures.  Some people may be turned off by the old school, slightly abstract cartoon drawings, but as an avid fan of John Kricfalusi, I found them to be a charming and welcome change from today’s modern push toward “realistic” graphics.

As for sound:  there are plenty of sound effects to give you good audible feedback as to what you’re doing.  Creaks, clinks, thumps and grunts abound.  Sadly, there’s only one music track, and it is played exclusively over the chapter interstitials.

Summary

Hamlet, like most good point-n-click adventures coming out now, is sadly rather short.  Playing through at a nominal pace will last you about an hour and a half to two hours.  I definitely would not recommend this to Shakespearian purists looking for a retelling of the tale, but going into it knowing the story is just a fun backdrop should help just about anyone appreciate what the game has to offer.  All told, I had fun with it.  Whether a short yet satisfying adventure like this is worth ten bucks is up to you and your devotion to the genre.

You can pick up this creative adventure game at http://www.alawar.com/game/hamlet/ on PC for $9.95 right now.