TL;DR: I literally soft-locked myself in Chapter 2 and now have to drop the playthrough.
I had a lot of nostalgia for this game from around 10 years ago. I only played part of Chapter 1 back then, so I was excited to finally play through the full thing now. Unfortunately, this game is such a chore to actually play.
Honestly, just play the *Monkey Island* games, the old Humongous Entertainment games, or watch this one on YouTube.
It hurts to say that, because the game definitely has its moments. There are parts of Chapter 1 that are legitimately great. The writing can be charming, the presentation is strong, the art style is lovely, and the voice cast is excellent. There are clearly a lot of good ideas here.
But the actual gameplay structure is endlessly frustrating.
The game pretends to offer choice while constantly funneling you through rigid, linear puzzle solutions. If you miss a specific item, use something in the wrong order, or fail to understand the exact solution the game expects, everything can grind to a hard stop.
Other adventure games handle this kind of design so much better. They give you multiple puzzle paths, funny ambient dialogue, good music, side activities, optional interactions, interesting failure responses, or at least enough charm that wandering around still feels enjoyable. Here, getting stuck is just tedious.
The movement speed makes this even worse. You walk so slowly, and there is no reliable way to quickly skip to the end of long hallways or speed up repeated traversal. If I have a theory about using one item in a specific location, it can take 90 seconds to walk there, only to find out the game does not allow that interaction, then another 90 seconds to walk back. That is three minutes of mindlessly holding a stick in one direction just to test a basic adventure-game idea.
The game is missing so many quality-of-life features: a consistent skip button, auto-skipping repeated failure animations, a hint system, better signposting, or dialogue that nudges you closer to the right direction after repeated failed attempts.
I am writing this after literally soft-locking myself in Chapter 2. I do not mean “I got stuck and gave up.” I mean I spent around an hour checking multiple walkthroughs and every route appears to be a hard dead end. At this point, I have to drop my playthrough and watch the rest on YouTube.
I had no way of knowing that sleeping to progress time would kill the unicorn goat. Real annoying, but fine. Then I got a frog and used it on some flies, assuming I would end up with the frog and the flies. Instead, the frog hops away and disappears from inventory. Again, there is no way to know this beforehand.
Then I get to the potion makers, and they ask for a frog. Seriously?
So I sleep to see if the frog respawns. Instead, the potion makers die of starvation (are you serious?). But their room unlocks, and the cauldron is still inside, so I figure I can make the potion myself since I have the ingredients. Nope. The game arbitrarily refuses to let you craft the potion without them present (just bad game design tbh).
So the potion route and the potion makers died from a situation I could not have known about. Fine, I’ll try the blacksmith or chef route instead.
The chef needs flour. To get flour, you need a key. To get the key, you apparently need to whack the left goblin. I whacked the right goblin. Great.
But wait, there is another option: you can get a lockpick with money. Except I have no money, and the remaining ways to get money are locked behind you guessed it potions I can no longer craft. Meanwhile, progressing the blacksmith also requires the broom, which is tied to you guessed it again potions!
So now every path is blocked. And have been bumbling around checking endless guides and posts to come to the conclusion that I have to now restart the chapter. F that.
Overall the writing, presentation, and art style have charm, but the gameplay structure actively fights against the player. For a game that appears to encourage experimentation, it punishes experimentation too harshly both in repercussions and tedium.
