Gilbert Goodmate and the Mushroom of Phungoria Review

Even though the P&C (point and click) adventure market is not as crowded as it used to be, the new titles in this genre are not far from their glorious ancestors, mostly produced at Lucas Arts and Sierra Studios... Gilbert Goodmate is not really trying to bring anything new to the genre; on the contrary, it looks as though it actually wanted to take a lot of things from... as you may guess... The Secret of the Monkey Island series.

Gilbert's appearance (and even his name) will remind you of his colleague from Lucas Arts' blockbuster adventure series. The game uses the "animated tri-action iconic interface" (a.k.a. the "cute little cartoon mushroom thingy" in this case), which was first introduced in Lucas Arts' Full Throttle. The three basic options it has to offer (look, talk/eat/kiss, and push/pull/pick) are a great and fairly simple way to point and click your way through the game. The inventory is also the same as in Lucas Arts' games, taking about 90% of the screen to draw an enormous box and all items in it... Not to speak of the map on which you move from one location to another and the little Guybr... sorry... Gilbert moving on it...

On the other hand, instead of being trapped in the Caribbeans, Gilbert Goodmate lives in a beautiful kingdom with an even more beautiful princess. Oh, and there's the king as well, but who cares about him. He may have some power, but the only thing the inhabitants of this kingdom really care about is a mushroom. Yup, you've read it well... a mushroom. The evil wizard Karn, who kept the citizens of the entire kingdom and its capital Phungoria in his vicious grip, was beaten thanks to that very mushroom. Ok, so a boy called Marvin who threw the mushroom at Karn's head was also to blame for this, but why should they celebrate him when a mushroom is so much more interesting? It was immediately put in the center of the town, where each year a ceremony takes place to celebrate liberation from the evil wizard. Each year on this festival, one of the citizens is chosen to guard the mushroom with his life for the next one year. The inconvenient thing is that this year, only one week before the festival, the mushroom got stolen. Now, the guardian who didn't manage to keep the mushroom safe will have to pay with his life, and this year, the guardian was Gilbert's own grandfather. Grandpa Albert is in prison, and Gilbert is the only one who can help him...

Gilbert will have to deal with many people and solve many problems if he wants to free his grandfather, but his adventurous spirit will make him go even further and find the mushroom and catch the thief.

As soon as Gilbert rushes down from his house on the cliff to Phungoria, he will meet a lot of its inhabitants. Even though they all seem pretty strange, they are a bunch of becoming weirdoes and you will enjoy talking to them. First of all, there's the princess Michelle, a nice blonde that will be willing to help you get your grandpa out of prison, Oliver the paper-boy that will always give you fresh info on what is going on around town, Madame Zyz and her ghost in the bottle, some Vikings, the EXTREMELY annoying sheriff, etc... There is really a lot of dialogue, and I have to say most of it is very interesting. As much as I hated the fact that the authors stole so much from Lucas Arts, I must say that they perfectly incorporated the good atmosphere and humor into the practically stolen engine concept. Even though I am not much of a fan of endless dialogues, it was a real pleasure reading through possible answers and deciding which one to choose. Some of you may need special mental preparations for the conversations with the ghost in the bottle, crazy Pete's teasing, or the ten-minute Monty Python-like conversation with the crystal ball salesman. I sure enjoyed them...