Hamlet

Just like EA's {Dante's Inferno} stayed true to the classic poem it was based on, {Hamlet or last game without MMORPG elements, shaders, and product placement} is faithful to the Shakespearean epic Hamlet. It tells the story of the Danish prince that vows the avenge the murder of his father, and is then accidentally squashed by a spaceship belonging to a man from the future. That man, called only The Hero, then must take up Hamlet's quest for revenge - otherwise the space time continuum risks collapse...

Hang on, that's not really the original story at all. Actually, the game has nothing to do with Hamlet at all except the names of the parties involved. But who cares, really? Who reads books these days? And who was that Shakespeare guy anyway? I have no idea.

{Hamlet or last game without MMORPG elements, shaders, and product placement}, from now on only referred to as Hamlet (or HOLGWMESAPP?), is a pretty typical hidden objects game in the same genre as {Machinarium} and {Axel & Pixel}. Every new screen has a couple of clickable objects and your goal is to figure out in which order, or when, you need to click them. Most of the puzzles are logical, and the times I scratch my head and can't figure out how to reach the next screen I almost always feel stupid when I finally solve the problem.

The whole game feels sweet. The graphics are simple, but charming. The puzzles are challenging, but a hint is unlocked if you spend too much time on a particular one so you never feel stuck. The Hero is cute as he grooves along to the nice music. The other characters, and the plotline, is hilarious at times. It's a...creative take on the source material, to say the least.

That said, it is much easier to point out the flaws in a game based on a premise this simple. And those flaws can get extremely frustrating. While the game won't punish you for taking your time solving the puzzles, some of the puzzles themselves demand you clicking quite fast. One example, which actually had me shutting down the game at one point and almost hurling random objects across the room, was the "boss-fight" against Claudius. To beat him, you need click the notes coming from his electric guitar (I am quite sure that there was a guitar in the play, right?) before they disappear. At first there's only one note, then two, then three...all the way up to six notes, which you all have to click before the hidden timer runs out. When it does, the notes reset back to only one. Claudius laughs. I scream.

It takes me out of the zone. That zone is quite frail to begin with, and a bad puzzle can easily smash it to pieces.

Most of the time, Hamlet it's a cute game with a fun story and some really cool puzzles. But it is also a study in how complicated it can be to make a game like this, how rewarding it can be for the player when it gets things right and how frustrating it gets when it gets things wrong.