This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

Another day and another mystery game reviewed for this series. After finishing up the latest Microids’ Agatha Christie game (that is only borrowing characters and not actually from a book that she had a say in), me and my wife needed another game that we could play together on those few nights where we want to solve mysteries ourselves outside of normal parental duties. Enter “Lord Winklebottom Investigates,” a recent switch purchase because it looked just weird enough to be interesting, but also if it turned out to be good would tickle our fancy of being a new mystery game that is more on puzzles then on action. Well we were in luck, because this game was more than just the weird I was promised while looking at the back of the box, and delivered a fairly competent game as well, so lets talk about a game no one has heard of until now.

Winklebottom, as we are going to call the game now, is pretty close to a point and click adventure game that has a lot of roots in Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie detective stories. You will pick up and carry around items to be either combined inside your inventory or used on later puzzles. In addition you will be questioning other characters and travelling through multiple screens, including an “island map,” in order to solve the mystery in front of you. When comparing it to adventure games, this has more in common with the adventure games of the 90s, then it does with the Agatha Christie games of today. You may be solving a murder mystery in both, but this is more of inventory puzzles and less conversation based solutions. The most notable thing about this game is that you play as the titular Lord Winklebottom, who is a Giraffe detective, and are accompanied by your Watson, which is a hippopotamus named Dr. Frumple. Yes, these are actual animals that you play as and not just character stand ins and they are fully voiced, so you don’t have to worry about parsing out the sounds of a Hippo. You will also come across all sorts of other animals (gecko, slug, pigeon, dogs, etc.) as there are no humans in this game… well kind of, there is a plot line that briefly discusses that humans used to exist in this world, but something happened that caused them to no longer exist. It isn’t really touched on further, but there is a story reason as to why you might be playing as animals.

Before we dive into the ins and outs of this game, I will say that this game is very much a comedy game. That might be apparent based on the name of the characters or even the fact that you are playing as animals during a murder mystery, but humor plays a big role in this game. I know comedy can be hard to pull off and it is very subjective to anyone who plays this game. I am no expert, but I would say this game has a very dry and subdued sense of humor as opposed to games that are a little more in your face. Winklebottom and Dr. Frumple are a good comedy duo that play off each other very well, and there were multiple times during the game where me or my wife had actual audible laughter from the game and not just a smirk or smile. I am not going to even pretend that everyone will find this game funny, it has more British sensibilities then Americanized ones, and only you know what you might find funny. However, the reason I want to get this part out in the beginning of the write-up is that if the comedy does not work for you, I don’t know if the game itself will either. It’s a perfectly competent and fine mystery, but I don’t think anyone would play through this entire game if they bounced hard off the humor. The charm is in the characters and the humor, even the timing of the jokes (I was letting dialogue play out, instead of putting through it, because comedy is about timing and you need to hear the timing for some of the bits for it to work), so if you want a murder mystery to be serious, or even somewhat grounded in reality.. then I suppose you can quickly move on from this recommendation.

On to the story, when we join our heroes they are invited to a friends house who has a big announcement to make. No one knows what the announcement will be, so Winklebottom and Dr. Frumple head out in a storm to get to the house of their friend. Only to quickly learn that he was found dead by the maid mere minutes before their arrival. Now due to the storm that is ravaging the island outside, it is up to Winklebottom and Dr. Frumple to investigate and solve the crime and ultimately who is responsible for the death of their friend. As you start to solve puzzles, interview potential suspects, you will of course learn that there are multiple people who all had a motive for the crime, and they almost always amount to: “thought their dark secret was going to be part of the announcement.” Overall I would say the plot is what you can expect from these types of games. The mystery is intriguing enough, and there doesn’t seem to be one character that ultimately stands out to be the villain that you can hone in on early on, so there were multiple occasions where after playing the game (for the night) me and my wife would discuss the case while brushing our teeth about where we think its going. I will offer a BUT here, because I felt like the back 3^rd of the game is incredibly rushed and felt like the developers either didn’t know how to end it, or simply they ran out of money. This is kickstarter game, and while I wasn’t aware of it ahead of time nor did I back it, the game is divided into chapters, but based purely on an hour count, chapter 1 and 2 are maybe 2-3 hours each, while chapter 3 and epilogue are a combined 1 hour. I won’t spoil the end of the game, but it feels like once you identify the culprit (who escapes), the tracking them down, dealing with them, and resolution of everything plays out almost completely absent of you in control. I understand that the game needs to wrap up, and they can’t have you go back to simply combing the whole island once you are searching for the killer, but I still felt there were scenes that could have used a puzzle, and instead just played out like a movie with you (the player) watching instead of actually playing. Outside of the rushed ending, I thought the story was certainly good enough to keep me invested and see what was going to happen. *Spoilers* One final note, is that it did the thing I hate in mysteries where there is no way to solve the real crime by piecing the clues together on your own. Since we are in spoiler territory here, me and my wife had picked out the chameleon as potentially being the guilty party, and we were half right, but there is no indication that the frog (the other guilty party) should even be considered because you don’t know his truth until you are told that he is lying about his name 20 minutes before the end. I know it can be hard to put everything out in the open and still cast doubt on everyone to make the reveal satisfying, but I would like to believe that if given all the clues and thoroughly exploring a location, reading all the notes, that you might be able to draw a conclusion that matches the detective, and not just be told here is the answer. *End Spoiler*

With any adventure game, we need to talk about the puzzles. I can give my usual spiel about how puzzles are going to vary person to person, but overall I feel Lord Winklebottom is a pretty light difficulty in terms of its puzzles. That is obviously not to say all of them are gimmies, and there were a few where you have to be willing to think outside the box, but I felt a lot of the items you get you can figure out just where to use them without having to “try everything on everything.” This is maybe my adventure game experience coming into play, but there were some instances where, before you can pick up the item you need to solve the puzzle, you first have to be “stumped” by the puzzle to “realize” you need an item. I understand from a character perspective, “Why would I carry around the hose all day,” but that perspective breaks when you are allowed to pick everything else up with no questions asked about it. This game is primarily inventory item puzzles, which can sometimes require you to need one item, that unlocks another item, that unlocks another, until you finally get to the item you need to give someone, and there is one puzzle later in the game that requires you to navigate through a forest maze by looking to see about any “disturbance” in the area to help determine which direction you need to go. There is an in-game help system, where you can ask Dr. Frumple what you should do next, but his clues are not gimmies, and it did not seem like if you click it more than once that he will eventually just give you the answer. There was one part where I was stuck as to what to do next, and the clue was simply “we should finish interviewing everyone,” and I had to go walk around until I found the single character that had a line of dialogue that I missed previously. Obviously I can only speak for myself, I was very rarely stumped on puzzles, never had to google an answer, and only relied on Dr. Frumple’s advice two or three times throughout the whole game. Do I think they are easy enough to have my kids solve them? Certainly not, but I don’t think this game has the abstract or random puzzles that were in the adventure games of yore.

Overall I enjoyed Winklebottom quite a bit and considering I bought it as a joke to show my wife, is a fairly good return. Where it ranks on your own personal list will probably depend largely on whether or not you enjoyed the sense of humor for the game, because the story and puzzles are not something on their own that I think this game does particularly better then other games of the genre. While I remember all the puzzles now, I don’t think they stay with me a month after beating the game, and the detective story is fun but also not as mysterious or intriguing to solve as some Sherlock games or even the ABC murders. But, with all that said, the humor can carry it above those things because it worked for me. I wasn’t rolling on the floor laughing everytime we played it, waking up kids in the neighborhood, but even real chuckles over small smirks is enough. I would be very curious about continuing the adventure of Lord Winklebottom as they solve more mysteries, should those games ever exist, and while that might not seem like much, since I have played bad Poirot games in the past and still purchased the follow up, I would love to see more.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: ummm... no

Where does it rank: Lord Winklebottom is a fairly fun albeit brief mystery game that I would gladly take it over all of the Agatha Christie games. Its humor goes a long way for me which helps it lift up a few notches. The ending feels rushed, the puzzles are a little on the easy side for my liking, and I would have loved another location or two in the game. I have it ranked as the 77th Greatest Game of All Time.

What's it Between: Lord Winklebottom Sits between: Elli (78th) and Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars (76th)

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening