The Trap Door

The Good
This is probably the first adventure game I've ever played. It's actually a bit difficult to put it in a definite genre, but I'd say it is an adventure/puzzle game, although quite original.

This game is based on a clay-animated tv-show, of which I have only seen a few episodes. It's cute, and a bit weird, just like the game.

You control Berk, a strange creature who lives in a castle. Berk's best friend is a skull, and his boss is never seen, but often heard. In the game, the boss constantly requests things of Berk, and it's your job to complete these quests.

These missions can be quite hard to complete. The first one is very straight forward. The boss wants some worms. Just open the trap door and let some worms out, then pick them up, put them in a jar and send them up the elevator. Yummy. The boss is happy.

I also remember a quest where the boss wanted some fried eggs. In order to do that, you had to let a giant bird out of the trap door. Then you had to shoot something up the bird's behind by using the trap door as a catapult, and then you had to hurry and catch the egg in a frying pan. Then you could fry it on the stove. It might sound easy, but it wasn't.

Usually the trap door was very unreliable. You never quite knew what to expect when you opened it. More than often, a terrible monster of some kind would come out, one which was more or less impossible to get rid of.

The graphics were very good at the time. The animations of Berk was excellent, and the castle was fun to explore. I also enjoyed annoying the talking skull.

The Bad
First of all, this game is difficult. You get few, if any, hints on what to do, and even if you know what to do it can be hard to perform due to bad controls. Also, it's sometimes hard to tell what the objects are supposed to be, due to the primitive graphics.

Had this game been done today the interface had surely been a simple point and click, which would have been much better. As it is now, everything takes ages, since Berk moves so slowly and the controls are so flimsy.

The sounds are not much to write home about. In fact, you'd do best to turn them off.

The Bottom Line
This is a cute and original adventure/puzzle game that had some good ideas, but that was unfortunately poorly realised. In the end this game is fun for a few minutes, just walking around, playing with the trap door and annoying the talking skull, but to actually play it and try to solve the quests is painstakingly difficult, slow and annoying.