Sandra and Woo in the Cursed Adventure

Hello there Woo fans and everyone who might become one, usually I dont write reviews since I always seem to have trouble finding the right words, but this time Ill make an exception. Sandra and Woo in the Cursed Adventure is a point and click adventure with many interesting puzzles and lovable characters. [b]About the game itself[/b] The plot is simple. You play as Sandra, waking up at night because you forgot to create your costume for a school theater rehearsal. After finishing it and going back to sleep, your computer activates and shoots some laser beams that sucked in everything they hit. Even Sandra and her raccoon Woo. Basically Sandra gets sucked into a videogame. From that point on the characters you play with change several times while you progress through the game. You control Woo in the gameworld to find and rescue Sandra who has been captured by some guards of a nearby castle. And since It doesnt take long until Sandras friends (Larisa and Cloud) notice shes missing they try to find and of course get her out of the gameworld. The game switches between gameworld where you have to progress with Sandra and Woo and the realworld where you have to progress with Larisa and Cloud to find clues on how to get Sandra out of the gameworld. All Characters used in the game have origins in the web-comic "Sandra and Woo" by Powree and Oliver Knörzer. In my opinion the game does a really good job in reflecting the characters of the comic. Some surroundings looks familiar, but after crosschecking the comic I couldnt really find many similarities between the places in the comic or the game. Which of course is not a bad thing, since for instance Sandras room doesnt really have a set appearance but changes more often. [b]Appearance and Animations[/b] I really like the main menu of the game. When you start the game you see a tree surrounded with some stuff and two flags. the Flag of Germany and the Flag of the United Kingdom. Everyone should get that this screen is supposed to be a language selection. But compared to other games that only have a static list to choose the language from you get it presented in a creative way. The real Main menu is pretty much standard for a game like this. Same screen. I had some problems finding the save/load button. But tooltips helped. The different places in the game are well designed and with one exception they all look realistic. The exception can be found on the screenshots of the game above (Of course only if you are on the games shop site). When you look at the image with the limonade stand you may notice that the appearance of the driveway and the bushes next to it does not really work (The grass under the bushes looks like its about 50cm under the driveway. But thats the only thing I noticed regarding that matter. The characters animations look fine. They move like people are supposed to move and I really liked the climbing animation near the end of the game. But sadly the characters animations and the backgrounds artwork doesnt really fit together. You can see that the characters walk on the backgrounds and are not really part of it. I found some places where the characters are supposed to be behind something but are in front of it which made it look unrealistic. Also on some rooms the angle of the character standing up didnt match the angle of the walls on the perspective you can see. I mean it doesnt really hurt the gameplay but are still some minor things you cannot unsee. [b]Sound and Voice-Acting[/b] I read in some other reviews that the sounds of some things are not realistic enough, or just strange. I can agree with that but personally I had no problems with it. The sounds of the different items or things you can interact with were fitting and enhanced my games experience (Except for the kissing sound that was... strange). Since I am German I started the game with German voices first, but after the Tutorial I decided to restart the game and play it on English. The German Voices sounded like German words with English like pronunciations. I cannot really describe it, but personally i preferred the English ones. The English voices were good. Especially the voice actor of Larisa did a very good job in my opinion. The overall audio quality was ok. Not the best but enough for this type of game. What I found really really frustrating were some audio errors or bugs related to sound I encountered. Especially near the end of the game when talking to Spuknit you could see him talking but neither got any sound nor subtitles. This really frustrated me since that took a lot from the ending. It was just okay somethings happening... "Someone is talking.", "No idea what hes talking about.", "Okay now I am here and I have to do this to finish.", "Aha yeah whatever." [b]Puzzles and Minigames[/b] Progressing through the game really reminded me of Deadalics Deponia Series. You run around the level, hammer your spacebar to try to find the piece you are missing to continue, but you just dont find it. These moments can be very annoying but thats what I like about point and click adventures. And this is no criticism at all. This is exactly how games of that kind should be. Unlike the Deponia games the item combinations made sense to me. I didnt have to think super abstract to figure out what to combine and since the number of items you could have is overseeable you also had no problem just trying some combinations. I must admit that I needed the Walkthrough 3 times. But only one time because I was really stuck and didnt know how to progress. The other two times I already had the solution but did not see on what to click to trigger the event to progress. I think its really nice that the Guide comes with the game as a free additional download. On other games you may end up watching a video for the solution which may also spoil you other parts of the game you yet have to discover. With the guide I just knew on which page I had to search for and it didnt take spoil me at all. The minigames were doable but still challenging. You had the option to skip them if necessary but it was fine. [b]Overall gameplay[/b] Also Standard for Point and Click adventures, left click to interact, right click to look at, and mouse wheel to open inventory. Thats all you need and its all you want. Sadly the game did well on wasting my time. There were strange location changes of the characters when trying to talk to someone or interact with something. (like running around the Cow to talk to it, even if already next to it), Or Cloud chasing Larisa for 10 Seconds before the conversation started. I wish room-changes were faster (Animation skip started after 3 Seconds). I mean its Cool to see the Characters moving, but maybe a "double click fast-travel option" would be useful. Also it would be nice to get instant feedback on not-working combinations. Instead of the character moving there to just tell me it wont work. Also when I dont have any more topics to talk about with a Specific person. It would just be enough to say "I dont have anything left to say" or something like that. A "Hi" followed by "Bye" doesst make any sense. There is space for optimization. [b]Conclusion[/b] Sadly I am about to reach the size limit of a review. So Ill just add my conclusion. I enjoyed the game. And If you are fan of the web-comic you might as well. The story and the characters are good. Animation and Sound as well as Gameplay need more work. Especially the sound at the end not working was really annoying. (Hope that one gets fixed) So If you are fan of the comic and like point and click adventures the game is for you. Otherwise you might not like it. This game is no Day of the Tentacle and by Far no Deponia. But still it Took me about 9 hours to finish. And I had fun while doing so. Oh and Kids: Sitting in A bathtub full of ice wont give you a cold and could otherwise cause severe damages. So dont try this at home.

Also Cursed ist es ... nur nicht auf eine gute Weise.

First to point out: I read the webcomic and like it a lot (I wouldn't have played the game otherwise). I played the game in German - it's my third language, meaning I'm not too good at it, but I'm striving to improve. While I think I understood everything, there could be some jokes I missed because of insufficient language level. Finally, I'm an RPG player, not an adventure player. Before you read further: if you don't know the webcomic, read it first (Sandra and Woo, available in English and German). If you don't like the webcomic, avoid this game. Everything below assumes you're a fan of the webcomic. Story & characters: It's incredibly similar to the webcomic arc stories. You're probably going to like it. There's the well known main characters from the webcomic, while many others make a cameo appearance. You switch control over multiple characters throughout the game. Here comes the first disappointment - in webcomic some characters are quite specific and the game doesn't quite follow that. <mild spoiler alert> For example Woo at one point says he can't reach something atop a tree, while in the webcomic he is known as a good class climber and shouldn't have any issue with the tree (he eats few animals, though, so thumbs up there). Also, with Cloud you'd expect to beat up something/someone with a katana (or any other weapon), but that doesn't happen. Larisa is pretty much chaos incarnate the first time you get to play as her, but the second time it's far milder. </mild spoiler alert> Gameplay I'm not an adventure player, so I admit I played with the guide - meaning I essentially skiped the part with randomly moving around and attempting to use everything on everything, so I can't comment on that. You'll be doing lot of amazing things, such as making a scarecrow scarier, building a miniaturized power plant, brewing a potion of wisdom, forcing a friend to catch cold, building a rocket and far more. Most of these tasks are funny and kinda insane, exactly as you would expect from the webcomic-inspired game. There's a few minigames, too. I can't honestly say I liked them, but they were okay. Most of them only showed up for a short while and were gone again soon, but one particular minigame was repeated three times, which was kinda boring. Fortunately, though, it was largely skippable. Graphics Here comes the second, and largest, disappointment. While most of the graphics are nice and drawn in Sandra-and-Woo style, the animations are just poor. I used to play games with animations like these twenty years ago. The poor quality of the animations (especially when someone is walking) is sometimes disturbing, so I'm sorry a bit more work wasn't put into that part. Sound In my oppinion the characters speak perfectly, at least in the German version. Larisa's russian accent is just as I always imagined it, Sandra and Cloud speak exactly as you would expect them too. Others, especially the new ones, are also very good. Jokes Here is the thir disappointment. For some reason I expected the game to be funnier. Perhaps I'm too stoic, but for the most parts I just smirked. Honestly, there were a few moments where I just laughed aloud (mostly parts that involved Larisa or the king). I could have missed a few jokes because of German language, but alltogether I expected a bit more. Alltogether: I'm recommending the game, as I enjoyed it even with the few issues mentioned above.

Great puzzles, beautiful graphics and even better storyline! A very enjoyable game worth every penny of its price and more!

Um das Wichtigste vorweg zu nehmen: das Spiel erfindet das Genre nicht neu und die Empfehlung gilt AUSSCHLIESSLICH für Fans des Webcomics. Das Spiel macht an sich recht Spaß, allerdings muss man bei einigen Rätseln und Kniffen um mehr als nur ein Eck denken, sonst artet das manchmal in wahllosem Ausprobieren und Rumklicken aus. Abgerundet wird dies durch ein paar Minispiele, die zum Weiterkommen wichtig sind. Diese können allerdings übersprungen werden, sollte man daran wirklich mal verzweifeln. Das Spiel erhält Abwechslung durch die vier steuerbaren Charaktere, welche neben den namensgebenden Hauptcharakteren noch die destruktiv veranlagte Larisa und der mutige Cloud sind. Bei einigen Rätseln ist es wichtig, die Charaktere und ihre Art zu kennen. Nicht so gut gelungen ist die deutsche Synchronisation. Die klingt zuweilen lieblos und manche Charaktere (wie Cloud) sprechen die Namen deutsch aus, während andere sie englisch aussprechen. Wer der englischen Sprache mächtig ist, sollte lieber im Originalton spielen. Die Grafik besitzt viel Liebe zum Detail und ist wirklich gut gelungen, die Bewegungen der Charaktere aber wirken manchmal etwas steif und ungelenk. Das ist allerdings nur ein kleiner Wermutstropfen. Das Herz des Spiels ist jedoch der für den Comic typische Humor. Seien es nun die Dialoge oder die durchaus komischen Szenen, die sich im Verlauf des Spiels abspielen werden. Fans von Sandra und Woo dürften daran die meiste Freude haben. Alles in allem ist es ein kurzweiliges, spaßiges Spiel mit einer durschaus gelungenen Story, welches allerdings (wie eingangs erwähnt) nur Fans des Webcomics in seinen Bann ziehen dürfte. Ansonsten dürfte der Spielspaß nämlich schon beim Tutorial wie ein Kartenhaus im Wind zusammenbrechen. Wer den Webcomic liebt, darf ruhig zugreifen.

Στα [+] • Δέν ανήκει στήν κατηγορία τών Παιδικών, όπως ίσως θά μπορούσε νά χαρακτηριστεί κοιτάζοντας κάποιες από τίς εικόνες τού παιχνιδιού. Ισα-ίσα μάλιστα πού οι γρίφοι του είναι ιδιαίτερα πολύπλοκοι καί δύσκολοι. • Αρκετά μεγάλης διάρκειας καί μέ 3-4 ήρωες νά εναλλάσονται. • Κατά διαστήματα γίνεται πανέξυπνο καί διασκεδαστικό. Στα [-] • Κατά διαστήματα γίνεται κουτό καί βαρετό. • Η ύπαρξη πολλών γρίφων πού μόνον μέ τήν μέθοδο τού κλίκ-μέ-όλα-πάνω-σέ-όλα μπορούν νά ξεπεραστούν. Συνοψίζοντας • Τρομερά άνισο καί μέ συνεχή σκαμπανεβάσματα. Τό βέβαιο είναι ότι χρειάζεται ιδιαίτερη επιμονή/υπομονή, πράγμα πού σημαίνει ότι σέ κάποιους θ' αρέσει καί κάποιοι άλλοι θά τό βαρεθούν. Βαθμολογία: 2,5/5 http://adventures-index10.blogspot.com/2015/08/sandra-and-woo-cursed-adventure.html

Love the web comic, not a fan of the game. Unlike regular point-and-click adventure games, you don't have the option to run, the animation isn't stellar, and the mini-games get old very quickly, especially the hacker ones. And if that wasn't bad enough, I can't finish the game just stops at the end cutscene after the last hacking mini-game, preventing me from progressing any further (it's not frozen, I can still bring up the menu, but I can't do much else). Extremely disappointed.

Mediocre adventure game with annoying minigames, as a fan of the comic I hoped for more.