Toonstruck

In my 19 years as a gamer I have never wrote a review about a game until now. That sentence alone is testament to how amazing this game is and the countless hours it sucked in. Toonstruck has everything you could want in a point and click, great animations, beautifully drawn landscapes, a gripping and funny story. Not to mention that it has a host of famous voice actors from Tim Curry to Christopher Lloyd. The best part for me though is the originality and imagination used in the puzzles and challenges that await the player. The music suits the game perfectly and the different moods and themes that it is meant to portray. Get stuck in now!

The short version: If you are a fan of old-school 2D point-n-click cartoon adventure games fan then you should already own this game! The somewhat longer version: This was one of the first (computer) games I ever bought, and will always be in my top 5 adventure games of all time. Visually, the game features gorgeous hand-drawn art which fits the game's "cartoony" character perfectly. The musical score is equally great and certainly adds up to the experience. The voice acting is perfect (unlike many similar games of the same era) and actually helps the players immerse themselves even deeper inside the game's world. The puzzles are mostly inventory-based and clever - I am still impressed by this game because I was never frustrated while playing it - there is no pixel-hunting and no illogical smash-my-head-on-the-wall puzzles. The difficulty is perfectly balanced for novices and experienced gamers. The dialogs are great and almost always funny without getting tiresome - I remember repeating the same dialogs again and again at certain points just for the fun of it. And last, but absolutely not least, the main character is played by the great Christopher Lloyd who once again proves his acting skills and definitely helps make this game a top-class title. Extremely recommended!

I've had this game since it came out. When you pop in the CD and do setup, the sound test is Tim Curry doing a sinister read of the words "Welcome to Toonstruck *laugh*" I bring this up because this is the kind of game this is. There are a lot of famous actors and comedians in this game from Jim Cummings (the legend) to Rob Paulsen. From Tim Curry to Christopher Lloyd. Even Dan Castellaneta who has a fairly significant role in the game. The puzzles I feel are a lot of fun to solve. They may not completely make sense logically, but they make sense in their surroundings. Even so, they don't get particularly difficult until later in the game (I think there's only one puzzle I've ever been stuck on in this game) and these days finding a walkthrough isn't hard if you do stuck. The animation in this is top notch. This game came out when Adventure games were "dieing" and so it failed to meet sales expectations. This is a shame because everything about the presentation is top notch. The animation is above and beyond anything Sierra or Lucasarts were ever able to do nor did they ever attempt this level of quality. The cutscenes would be saturday morning cartoon worthy if not for the (now) old fashioned video compression which is very obvious (always has been but got more obvious when screens resolutions got larger). For me this never detracted from a really fun story, but I felt it was important to mention. The story is similar to "Who framed Roger Rabbit" in a lot of ways. Except in this it's done more in a "Wizard of Oz" style. Instead of the cartoon world being real you're not sure if Drew Blank (that's the name of the character you control played by Christopher Lloyd- yes the game is not shy of puns) is dreaming or not, but much like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" you love that you're a real person in a cartoon world. I want to say more, but this counter is saying I am limited to what I have. Toonstruck is an under appreciated gem. If you haven't played it play it right now.

This is one of my all time favorites so I just can not be objective about this one! Excellent writing, excellent story telling, so many funny and brilliantly designed characters, no annoying little bits (such as quick time events doom choices or such), nice puzzles along the way... It's a good story, told in a wacky and funny way, dressed with many puns to give you plenty of chuckles. You'll just love Flux Wildly and Drew Blanc. Although if you expect a challenging point and click adventure to make you pull your hair out, this isn't your cup of tea: veterans of the genre might find it too easy. Point and click adventure is my genre of choice but I wouldn't say I'm a pro or something like that, and I've visited walkthroughs in many games. For a measurement let me say I only visited a walkthrough once or twice while playing this. But still even the veterans would find good value in the characters, the story and the jokes. UI is easy to use, I doubt the controls would give you any trouble at all. I would strongly recommend this game.