Want to relive the “old fashioned” days of traditional 2D point and clickers? Want to play an excellent and whacky adventure? Here’s the best part – want to do it for free? Well thanks to a very talented and generous gentleman named Tim Furnish, it’s all yours at the click of a download link!

This game is very retro – it reminded me somewhat of the classic LucasArts games such as Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max. The player interface is very user friendly, the game is smooth and rock stable, the background art is excellent, and the music and sound effects are first rate. The characters are somewhat blurry and pixilated and the dialog is of the text selection variety with no digitized speech. But, hey, we’re talkin’ FREE! We’re also talkin’ an excellent game!

When the lead character is a “dorky” guy named Hurford Schlitzting who dons a bathrobe and a pair of vastly oversized slippers during the game you know you’re in for a pretty zany romp. Poor Hurford is awakened one night by an ominous thunderstorm and thus begins his adventure. The game is designed with a morphing cursor allowing for walk to, look at, use, pick up, and talk to. This game is chock full of interactive spots and loads of items to pick up – in fact the inventory is one of the largest I’ve seen in a game of this genre. There is a LOT of cool stuff to play with – even plenty of opportunities to use inventory items on each other. Our hero, Hurford even gets to hack a computer – one of the programs on the machine is named “Lookout Express” – heh heh. This is truly a very well thought out, innovative, and challenging game. Oh, throw in the word FUN also! This game could very easily qualify for the “retail shelves”. Trust me, download this puppy and I’m confident you’ll be as amazed as I was.

The game download page is located at: http://outoforder.adventuredevelopers.com. Besides the game download link, you’ll find background information on the characters, game development history, wallpaper downloads, a forum, and screen shots. Once the game is launched, an “option” will transport you to another cool game page (http://www.hungrysoftware.com/#/games/outoforder). This site also allows for a FREE download of the SLUDGE development kit which Tim used to create this game, and FAQs. Yep, if you’re a budding game developer, go for it!

For more information on this gem of a game, please see the accompanying interview with Tim Furnish, the game’s creator.

Final Grade: B+

System Requirements:

Tim’s Minimum System Requirements:

• Windows 95 or newer
• Pentium 200 MHz
• soundcard supported but not required