I adore The Princess Bride. The movie, that is. It’s a wonderfully witty tale of true love, courage, enormous rats, six-fingered murderers, swashbuckling, miracles, torture and everything else that belongs in a great story.

The Princess Bride game, on the other hand, is a casual game aimed at… At… I’m not sure… It tries to do everything all at once, but you know what they say about jacks of all trades. They end up with stress and ulcers when they attempt to act like masters in a particular area.

The game features a time management minigame, a hidden object minigame, a trivia minigame, a platformer, and a very original form of hidden object adventure thingy. Except for the last one, I’d say that the game’s components are all sub par for their respective genres.

The time management minigame is dull and repetetive. It’s as if a couple of managers played Diner Dash and decided that they know all about how to make a good time management game. The hidden object minigame is uninspired and repetetive, even though it features a very cute colour mixing component. The platformer minigame is great in theory: you control both Wesley (who has a sword) and Buttercup (who can leap high), and switch between them in order to get past various obstacles. But it’s not all that fun to actually play. It’s a real pity, ’cause there are too few platformers that utilize the use-different-characters-to-advance mechanic a la Lost Vikings.

The trivia minigame’s difficulty is pretty uneven but at least it’s short and quick to play. It also features some of the most ridiculous multiple choice questions that I’ve ever seen. E.g.

Be careful with roses because you might hurt yourself on…

A) A thorn
B) A wild badger

That’s bloody brilliant! And on that note I have to say that The Princess Bride game is pretty funny overall. Not hilarious and witty like the movie, but cute and worth a brief smile. Speaking of things that bring a smile to my lips (aside from naked women and beer): the game’s fifth minigame is really innovative! Storm the Castle it’s called, and it’s nothing more that placing objects in their assigned positions. “What’s so innovative about that, you silly sod,” you ask. Well, the innovation comes from the fact that all of these objects have to be found in the intro and outro movies played throughout the game! Sure, it’s not all that fun to have to watch all the movies and click on random things, but the concept, the idea, is absolutely brilliant.

Finally, the game’s production values are excellent: smooth animation, funny characters, good intros and outros that follow the movie storyline, and a lot of voice acting. Voice acting that’s actually pretty good! The music isn’t bad either – although the title tune doesn’t fit in at all. I’d really like to see this game’s budget. I could probably make dozens of games for half that!

Graphics

Great characters, mostly great animation, great backgrounds, great movies. Some of the minigames could have better art.

4/5

Sound

Horrible title tune. Quite good music other than that. Tries to sound like the movie soundtrack (but fails).

4/5

Gameplay

A lot of variety in game styles but often too repetetive and simple.

2/5

Addictiveness

Not awful, but the shallow minigames doesn’t exactly leave a player yearning for more.

2/5

Technical notes

Just one small thing to mention: the game doesn’t pause when I alt-tab away.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 13th, 2008 at 11:08 am and is filed under Indie Game Reviews, Indie Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.