Windows

Full Moon in San Francisco

This game pokes fun at just about everything, including you, and its own production team. I even found out that some of the game’s most difficult puzzles don’t have to be solved at all (the joke’s on you!). This game does not march to the cadence of “other” adventure games – it dares to be different. It also deserves your attention. Alternative Games has a second Full Moon adventure planned as well – as they so unabashedly point out during your game play.

From a game with a box tagline that reads “You’ve never played anything like this before”, comes something decidedly different. Not even halfway through Full Moon in San Francisco, a new independent adventure from Alternative Games, I suddenly realized that I had…never played anything like this before. This is not really a great achievement of originality, but more like a bucket of mixed nuts (the kind where you end up with a handful of brazil nuts and two cashews) from which you don’t know what exotic legume will next emerge between forefinger and thumb. Yes, a legume is a bean. See what I mean! What variety!

Embedded in the game are hundreds of situation comedies that have no bearing on "solving the case" but that add to the humor (making prank phone calls for instance). Playing the game twice, choosing to be male instead of female or visa versa, will give you a different character voice, different conversation replies, situations, and a new set of jokes.

All in all, Full Moon in San Francisco is a jaunty little frolic, which if approached in the right way will likely provide some fun. How much will probably depend on you to a greater degree than in many other games. I wanted to like it more, but enjoyed it enough to play it again, after a break and probably with one of my daughters (Clare in particular will like the pet pop-ups). It had modest and admirable aspirations and all up I thought it generally lived up to them.

To switch genres for a moment, RPG and action gamers don't accept the kind of game today they played ten years ago, and neither should we. Nor should we be so desperate or blinded as to welcome a game of this uneven design and quality. The Dark Falls and Tony Toughs are out there, and these are the kind of efforts we need to support. Full Moon may have been an interesting little shareware title, but I can neither recommend it for your purchase consideration or playing time. All of the major factors that make a game good are flawed—interface, graphics, script, acting, puzzles. The Edmonton group is planning a second Full Moon title. We wish them well in their efforts during their long winter, hoping that the outcome will not be "part two, deja vu," with all of the critical limitations we've examined here.