Gilbert Goodmate and the Mushroom of Phungoria Review

As for the way objects are used, it is mostly OK, and all object combinations are fairly logical (I say fairly, because you cannot expect a game like this to be completely realistic). The only problem here is that the number of objects you can collect is enormous, and grows progressively, so that you can expect to have a box full of various things after some ten minutes of play. After some half an hour, most inexperienced players will go: "Oh, god, I have a ton of junk in the inventory and can talk to a large number of people, and I am still clueless. Let me try all combinations out, something has to work". This will require quite some time.

I also hated the fact that you will never have a feeling like you were progressing through the game. Practically everything takes place in a couple of locations and you will constantly have to run from one to the other. The plot is extremely complex so that you will have to do things and figure things out all the time, but you still won't have an impression you made much progress. Even the simplest of things will make you think hard and solve a million sub-plots in order to get to them. The lack of exploration and constant walking from one character to another can get a bit tiresome, and if we add that the game isn't exactly the easiest in its genre, there's a good reason for a lot of people to give it up.

The graphics resemble a motley comic book, and are, of course, in complete 2D. The backgrounds and the characters look great, though I have to admit that I did not like the style and the animations all that much. How should I explain this... Everything is 2D, which is OK as it is a 2D game, but they all somehow look like paper cut-outs pasted on a drawn background. The character animations are also a bit strange and have few frames. This unfortunately goes both for the characters in town and Gilbert himself. The first time I started the adventure and saw Gilbert stretching and zipping up in some 5-6 frames spanned to a couple of seconds I felt really disappointed. Later, I got a bit used to this but I still felt like I was playing a slightly older game which is technically far behind serious titles like Monkey Island and Stupid Invaders... Just like in most adventures of this kind the screen is in 640x480 with a 16-bit palette. This 2D engine, however, supports transparency, draws shadows below the characters and makes the characters a bit darker when standing in the shadows.

As for the sound segment, it is pretty good, mostly thanks to the fact that the developers hired professional actors to give voices (and I already said there are a lot of dialogues) to the game characters.

When you look at all the good and bad sides of it, Gilbert Goodmate is still a nice adventure game that should be played. I might have been a bit harsh towards it in writing this review, but I sure had fun while playing it. Its technical aspects are definitely far from perfect, but its story and all other things most important in real adventure games make it worth a try.