The Snakes of Avalon has been described as weird. Is it weird? Well, yes — and no. In Snakes you play a guy who is perpetually drunk. What happens along the way may be weird by normal standards but in an alcohol-induced daze, not so much. There’s a murder plot, or maybe there’s not. You’ll have to decide…
In The Snakes of Avalon you play a man who is so drunk that even the bartender doesn’t like him (even if he is his best customer). You think you overhear a a man and a woman plotting the murder of the woman’s husband in one of your drunken stupors. You also feel it’s necessary to prevent this. At one level there is the main plot of trying to thwart the murder, and then you have this other level, which has something to do with your parents. I won’t mention anymore about the subplot so you can experience it for yourself, but I will tell you it does involve a time machine. The two stories are along the same lines and that makes it somewhat interesting.
The weirdness comes from all the different, seemingly illogical elements that come into play. You’ve got good and bad consciences in the form of a moose-head and a talking fish, a zombie-skeleton moose, a time machine, and a bizarre puzzle involving light bulbs. It’s pure madness, but there is a method to the madness within the story. Yet it all fits because it’s all within the main characters imagination while drunk. It just fits rather oddly.
The game-play is pretty standard point-and-click fare and it’s pretty easy for anyone to get around the interface. You interact by left clicking, and examine items by right clicking. In order to get around “Ye Olde Pixel Hunt” the cursor will highlight when it’s over an object that can be interacted with.
The visuals in this drunken diversion look like they were drawn by some deranged 10-year-old. Yet, the perspective-poor backgrounds, and the limited animations, coupled with the idea of being so drunk you hallucinate promotes a certain synergy that wouldn’t exist in other games with these kinds of visuals. The crude graphics just work.
The audio is a bit of a mixed bag. I enjoyed the music, and at times didn’t even notice it. Other times I remember thinking that this kind of game shouldn’t have quality music like this. In fact, this is a good sign of the quality of the music since I tend to mostly remember the negative things about games rather than the positive ones. It seemed to fit the game-play. The sound effects were adequate as I don’t remember anything particularly noticeable or jarring about them. The voice acting was poor and sounded as if the developers were doing the voices themselves. Luckily there wasn’t much voice acting to ruin an otherwise interesting game.
I think you should give this a shot because I believe the developer is trying to advance the storytelling aspects of the adventure game genre by layering two different stories that happen to co-exist quite nicely. This game is available for Windows for free. You can also download the soundtrack if you like it.
You can find it here – Snakes of Avalon in the AGS Archives
Tags: Adventure, free, Freeware, Snakes of Avalon, windows
Thanks very much for the review!
Interesting that you brought particular attention to the fact the game is telling two different main stories. They are connected of course, but not in the usual ways. That was indeed the intention. There’s even a third, less prominent, fragmented, but very important story within – actually a tale, that Jack can read at one point, but let’s not spoil it…
I was curious about if you ever cierodnsed replacing the page layout of your web site? Its very well written; I enjoy what youve got to state. But maybe you can create a little more in the way of written content so people could connect with it better. Youve got a great deal of wording for only having one or two photographs. Maybe you can space it out better?
В «Наркононе» мы посвятили себя одной цели: помочь вам навсегда преодолеть зависимость. Во внимание принимается каждая деталь, чтобы дать вам стабильность и комфорт, a также помочь освободиться от зависимости и заново начать свою жизнь без наркотиков.
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