Publisher: Corbomite Games
Developer: Corbomite Games
System requirements: Windows 98 or later; DirectX 8; .NET Framework 2.0; 3D accelerated video card compatible with DirectX 8
Genre: Adventure
Release date: Available now

About eight or so years ago, everyone was screaming rather loudly that adventure games were dead. Then, after a steady flow of bad games set off the zombie alarm, everyone was screaming that adventure games were undead. Today the drama is fortunately over. We live in an age of excellent indie adventures (Ben There Dan That), oldie remakes (The Secret of Monkey Island), resurrected franchises (the Sam and Max episodes) and some promising games in development (The Whispered World). Adventure games are being released regularly, the latest being Pizza Morgana Episode 1: Monsters and Manipulations in the Magical Forest.

You start by watching a cinematic of a little girl named Jackie flying through a forest on an out-of-control broom. She is stopped by a talking tree and begins to explain how she ended up in this predicament. Jackie had come home from school and had tried to order pizza. A vampire appeared, followed by a robotic cop. All three teleported to another dimension. But the pizza still needed to be delivered as far as Abbie Positive (the vampire) was concerned, and Jackie wanted to go home to her own dimension, which is apparently known as “The World of Numbskulls.” Dialogue and puzzles lead to the unfortunate broom ride.

So how do you exert control over this magical mess? Well, you walk around by clicking on your destination. When you see something of interest, hover over it and the cursor becomes an eye or a hand. Objects you’ve picked up that can be used on each other or on the world are stored in an inventory. Conversations are conducted using a dialogue tree. You can switch between playing Jackie and Abbie as the game progresses. The most important element of Pizza Morgana is the puzzles, which include the usual item-based variety as well as some logic puzzles, one of which has you using a fuse box to power rooms in a specific sequence.

Pizza Morgana feels like the indie game that it is. You can easily tell that this is a labor of someone’s love. The backgrounds appear to be hand drawn in a nice comic-book style. The writing is pretty neat and is in fact better than that of some high-profile games. Everything is fully voiced, and I’d like to compliment the developers on having done this part especially well. Puzzles are logical if overly simplistic, but given that the target audience includes children, this is easily forgivable.

Not all is perfect, however. In Pizza Morgana the world is a 2D image, but the character is a 3D model. While the 2D part delivers, the 3D falls flat. The characters look somewhat plausible when far away, but their faces are unbearable to behold up close; I wish animations had been used instead. Also, some of the puzzles don’t make much sense, particularly in a scene in which words have to be acquired. Lastly, the game will take you about 20 minutes to complete, 10 if you are an experienced adventure gamer.

Developer Corbomite Games’ website claims this game is for “fans of the Pizza Morgana series, adventure gamers, and girls looking for a strong female character to identify with.” While I can’t help but scoff at the latter, the first two groups make sense. I suggest downloading the demo; any game that allows you to combine magical words for skull and chicken to get a talking skull that says “Silence I kill you!” is worth checking out.

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