Willy Morgan and the Curse of Bone Town Review
Developer: imaginarylab
Publisher: VLG Publishing
Platforms: Steam (Reviewed)
Price: $19.99 ($14.99 until Aug 18th)
Release date: Aug 11th 2020
Some assembly required
Willy Morgan and the Curse of Bonetown resurrects gameplay from the early third-person graphic adventure classics like Space Quest and Willie Beamish. Gameplay is straightforward as you select and manipulate various objects in Willie’s environment to move the story forward. Like the earlier games, you need a trained eye for detail and a little imagination to progress. The game begins with you confined to the Morgan house as Willy (that’s you) receives a mysterious message from his missing father, archaeologist Henry Morgan, summoning him to Bonetown.
Pirates AND Hippies!!?? This town has Everything!
To accomplish this and exit the house, he must find the parts to assemble his bicycle to make the trip. His mother is no help as she is apparently off doing “research” in South America or some such parent of the year excuse to get her out of the way and Willy left to his own devices as he reaches and explores the suggestively named Bonetown. Fans of the older games will be quite at home as you complete this and similar puzzles using your eyes and other objects from the environment. Here Willy Morgan, like its predecessors, falls down a bit. Like many games in the genre, solutions are scattered in arbitrary and nonsensical locations that seem reasonable possibilities for a player to get an “I’m sorry, I can’t do that Dave” response from the game. For example, the bicycle handlebars are in the refrigerator and a wheel is bolted to the wall as a dream catcher, but you can only get it free by using an object from the bathroom. Yes, this is classic point and click frustration, but it’s also sloppy writing and unintuitive gameplay that forces you to think in improbable “pineapple on pizza” type combinations. Annoyingly, this first part of the game features a voice over for Willy, but this stops once he reaches Bonetown.
“All of our in room movies are rated Arrrrrr.”
The controls are straightforward, even giving little hints about what is clickable, and the items once placed in inventory are dragged to whatever you want to have them interact with. For example, to pay a bill, one drags money to the person you want to pay. The artwork is gorgeous if surreal, as if Betelgeuse met Scooby Doo, which honestly would be a good idea for a game if anyone’s listening. The music is likewise appropriate and well done. Occasionally the game cuts away to show other events, such as an Innkeeper’s phone call and these can be a nice surprise, I actually laughed at a couple. Bottom line Willy Morgan is a fine addition to the genre, the art and music is great and the story is well done.
Aside from the aforementioned frustrations with the unlikely nature of some puzzles, I enjoyed Willy Morgan. I should also point out that I would have these same frustrations with any game of this type. I’m still waiting for one that manages to get the character through the story without ridiculously having to combine random object B with random object L to turn on the television, but given the limitations of the format, I’ll probably never see it.
Solid Choice for old-school adventure lovers.
The Good:
• Excellent art and music.
• Well thought out controls.
• I didn’t use a single inappropriate pun.
The Bad:
• Puzzles design needs work.