A Tale Of Two Kingdoms

We Don't Give enough coverage to free point-and-click adventures on these pages, but that's because they're rarely much good. If you see me writing about a free point-and-click adventure, it's probably because I couldn't find anything more worthwhile to do.

But now I'm going to destroy this notion I've just created by telling you that A Tate of Two Kingdoms isn't the sweltering heap of mediocrity you might first believe it to be. It's a well-crafted game, evocative of those old point-and-clicks that weren't made by LucasArts but were still kind-of good.

The game starts off a little poker-faced, spinning a medieval yarn which sees you, an ambassador for one kingdom, staying at the castle of a king of another kingdom, walking the tightrope of diplomacy as an army of goblins worries your collective townsfolk. You're trapped in an ominous temporal pre-dinner timescape until you can find the king's sceptre (it's under a vase), but once you do so the game becomes a curiously appealing project.

The olden talke veers from nauseating to both funny and interesting, while the author remains modest enough to avoid over-writing the script - asking a character a question never throws you headfirst into a swamp of verbal spooge.

The puzzles are straightforward, with clues sticking out of dialogue like smashed thumbs (yes, faeries do accept cider in exchange for safe passage through the forest), and the main character looks like a big-haired version of Jon Stewart. It's long enough so that you're more likely to get bored and stop playing before you run out of game -which means the burden of failure falls upon you, and not this perfectly capable adventure title.

But how could you possibly become bored, when there are multiple solutions to the game's puzzles? Aha, I see that twinkle in your eye. The promise of multiple solutions is guaranteed to do that to you.