Donkey Island - Final Rating

Written by Michael

I sometimes get excited over the littlest things.

After Alex's post last week, anything I write this time is going to be a massive let-down.  I apologize in advance.  I'll try to do my best in his shadow.  

But after his slightly disappointing game, I have a dilemma.  Which is harder, rating a game like my last one, and worrying about how people will feel I was too generous, or a game like this one, and worry about being too harsh?

This game has a lot of charm and character to it.  For something that was intended mostly as a demonstration of concept, a test of a homemade game engine, you can tell that the authors enjoyed the source material.  Then again, who DOESN’T enjoy the Monkey Island games?  (Well, I’m sure there’s ONE person reading this blog right now that’s calling them overrated, but remember, we ARE an inclusive blog, tolerant of all opinions, even the wrong ones.)

Shall we begin?

Puzzles and Solvability

Hmmm.  So, the puzzles in this game are mainly fetch quests, and the solutions are sometimes reasonable and sometimes ridiculous.  I have to be careful not to count issues with the interface here, as that will be a later discussion.

Some puzzles are straightforward, like sharpening the knife.

Because that's the most logical solution, especially when you're carrying an empty bottle.  A regular, green bottle.

Most of the big puzzles are without hints or reasons.  Getting the magician to talk to you?  I only lucked upon the solution of climbing in the chimney, there was no sensible reason to do it and no obvious hints to try.  Death of the sea?  Those four words are all you are given to realize you need to fashion a fishing pole (using something really large, an anchor, as a hook) to catch a shark.  Really?

Often, you need to learn from being dead-ended.  Exploring the temple entrance before the end of the game?  Dead end.  Accidentally click the USE icon on the sausage?  Dead end (and a full stomach).  Using a spell in the wrong location?  Dead end.

Oddly enough, I don’t think you can die in this game.  I should have tried staying underwater for more than ten minutes.

Looking at past ratings, I’ll give this a 2, tying it with Les Manley.  But really, that game was sometimes more logical.

Interface and Inventory

One of the rare background items with a description.

At first glance, the interface seems okay, a handful of icons, which can be rotated through with the right mouse button, similar to Sierra games of the time.  A limited inventory that never gets filled, so it is of no consequence.  They programmed in dialog trees, even!

But there are constant, unforgiving pixel hunts, sometimes with no apparent reason.  Talking to the rubber donkey, Dunlop, requires clicking on certain parts of his face.  Click anywhere else on his body, and the game thinks you’re trying to talk to the scenery.  Exiting many screens requires finding the small, unmarked area they randomly chose to be a portal.  

For some items, looking at it wouldn’t provide the information you needed, but if you clicked USE on it, it would simply act as if you examined the item.

As for inventory manipulation?  Using the vine on the anchor works, but using the anchor on the vine does not.  There’s a few cases of such poor programming in the game, and some hidden with poor jokes.  In this case, if you try to click the anchor first, your character tries to... eat a large metal anchor?!?

And most unforgivingly, for a game with dead-ends, a limit of FIVE save slots.  Not cool, gentlemen.

Some individual items were cute; the useless voodoo doll was a humorous item.  But that’s the exception rather than the rule.

Another match with Les Manley, a score of 2.

Story and Setting

My review of the story.

Not much of a story here.  Mighty Pirate Gajbraš, while pillaging, is shipwrecked on an island and needs to escape.  It turns out, later, that the island is the home of Pirate LeGek, the brother of a pirate Chuck he previously killed.

That’s it.  

The setting is also rather simple, an island with a few locations, a few inhabitants, and a handful of items.  The island used to have more inhabitants, but some past event caused them to leave.  

That’s also it.

A score of 2.  That’s it.

Sound and Graphics

The best artwork in the whole game, seen for a few seconds in the introduction.

The graphics are decent.  I’m pretty sure that the Gajbraš character is stolen directly from Monkey Island 2, but everything else appears to be freshly made.  There is a respectable amount of background animation, like the smoke coming from the chimney of the hut, and the oozing of the liquid rubber from the tree.

There is, by contrast, absolutely no sound.  Except for some disconnected PC speaker beeps at the start of the game during the opening credits.  The first game I ever reviewed here, the text based Castle Adventure, had more sound throughout the game.

I’ll be generous here.  A score of 3.

Environment and Atmosphere

That's as descriptive as it generally gets.  Typically.

The setting is a generic island.  I guess it feels like it.  As for atmosphere, the only NPCs are a lounging donkey who will trade rubber products for food, a magician that hides behind a curtain Wizard of Oz-style, and a talking skeleton.  None of which do anything.  The island is calm and peaceful otherwise, there’s no impending sense of doom, no need for urgency.

I’m having trouble getting excited about writing this, let alone the game itself.  A score of 2.

Dialogue and Acting

Same to you, buddy.

Excusing the occasional blip in the quality of the English translation, I’m judging this on the intent, and they mostly succeeded here.  There was an undercurrent of humor intended, which is well-placed in a parody/homage title.  And there were at least a couple of spots where it was spot-on, like in the intro post where I mentioned the humor from the narrator.  

Still, it’s far from perfect, and the characters are mostly just two-dimensional.  There’s no voice acting, and really, no animation acting either, so this scoring category rests on decent but far-from-perfect dialog.  I’ll give it a 3.

So, shall we practice what we’ve learned in math class?

(2 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 2 + 3) ÷ .6 = 23

This doesn’t seem right to me.  That’s higher than the score my first game, Castle, earned, and that game was much more enjoyable, with more puzzles and a more satisfying conclusion.  The presence of some color graphics doesn’t overcome that.  I’m going to remove one point from this. I should remove more.

I’m sorry, arcanetrivia.  I wouldn’t have been able to sleep at night otherwise.

LeftHanded Matt had the closest guess for the score, with his low-ball of 28. Everyone else gave the game a little more credit. Had it been a little longer, or planned as more than a proof-of-concept, it may very well have been.

Where does this fall compared to other games?  It’s still scored higher than most of Joe’s Christmas adventures, and a handful of MorpheusKitami’s foreign missed classics, so this feels okay, even still perhaps high.  But I’ll let it stand.

CAP Distribution

100 CAPs to Michael

• Swashbuckling Adventurer Award - 100 CAPs - for playing The Secret of Donkey Island for our enjoyment

35 CAPs to arcanetrivia

• Ghost Writer Award - 15 CAPs - for adding a lot of (better written) commentary to the posts

• Secret Word of the Day Award - 20 CAPs - For getting the secret reference by way of it being referenced in another parody, thanks to her encyclopedic knowledge of Weird Al

20 CAPs to LeftHanded Matt

• Peg Leg Prognosticator Award - 20 CAPs - for having the closest guess for the final rating of The Secret of Donkey Island

20 CAPs to UgraUgra

• Local Guide Award - 10 CAPs - for helping add some Czech background to the discussion

• Brother in Arms Award - 10 CAPs - for curating an incredible chronoblog about the Czech gaming scene

10 CAPs to gamer indreams

• Credit Where Credit is Due Award - 10 CAPs - for cashing in on an economic joke opportunity

10 CAPs to Ross

• Blunt Truth Award - 10 CAPs - for advanced medical knowledge

10 CAPs to Leo Vellés

• Teed Off Award - 10 CAPs - for leaking information about what he thought the main character was doing

10 CAPs to Alex Romanov

• Choice of a New Generation Award - 10 CAPs - for giving us an excuse to link to the (sadly abandoned) Video Game Soda Machine Project