80 Days

The Good
The highlight of this game is the writing. Jon Ingold is no stranger to interactive fiction and this is a fine effort on his part. The graphical style is also pleasing. You get some of the feeling of travelling around the world, seeing interesting places, and meeting interesting people.

The Bad
The main issue with this game is that it strays way too far from the spirit of the original book. In the book, Phileas Fogg is an orderly gentleman who makes a wager to travel around the world in 80 days based on knowing the optimal route up front and having enough cash on hand to safely get him there (barring any unforeseen obstacles). In the game, you don't even know a single complete route at the start, and you need to discover routes as you go. Often, what seems like an obvious route will not be available, and you can get stuck in random places with no apparent way to proceed onward. In addition, you start the game with far too little cash to be successful, certainly much less than Fogg had in the book. You can go to the bank to take out additional funds, but this takes way too long (and the more money you need, the longer it takes), and the lost time will cause you to lose the wager in any case.

The Bottom Line
This game is nice for getting a feel of travelling around the world in a Steampunk setting and having nice conversations with other travelers, but falls short as a game based on the famous Jules Verne novel.