This review and interview
originally appeared in The Inventory 14 & 15.
The Inventory is the Internet’s only online, downloadable adventure
magazine and is translated into seven different languages. You
can download past issues of The Inventory from Just
Adventure.

Rebecca Clements. Keep
this name in mind. She is the developer of one of the best adventures
made with the
AGS engine. Our choice for review of the month will probably be
a bit controversial, since this very same
month we review Syberia 2 as well, but after having
played both, Cirque De Zale (and actually many more
fan-made adventures) are way much more entertaining
than the dull sequel of Microids.

But what does this little
Cirque De Zale adventure have so much to offer, coming out of nowhere
to steal
Syberia 2‘s position as review of the month? It is a
point and click 3rd person adventure that has a funny
story, unique characters and an entertaining gameplay.
Let’s see each part of the game under close scrutiny.

Story: You
are Alexander Zale. Occupation: The circus
poop boy. Never seen that before in a CV? Well you
see it now in Cirque De Zale. One
day when Alexander does his work and cleans the elephant
pooh out of the
circus, he decides that he’s cleaned way too much crap
in his life and he has had enough of being slapped
around by his ringmaster, Astoundo. He therefore
decides to pull a prank on his ringmaster and fills his
magic hat with elephant crap. Astoundo gets humiliated
in front of his audience and in return he sends
Alexander to another dimension using magic.

Alexander now finds
himself in the middle of a quite weird town, and decides to
head for the palace where
he finds the king of this land. The… double-headed
king tells Alexander about how according to an old
prophecy, he is the one person that has been chosen to
save this land from the tyran who has kidnapped the
king’s daughter. Alexander of course doesn’t give a rat’s
ass about prophecies and kingdoms. All this guy wants
is to be the ringmaster of his own circus. Therefore he
ignores the king’s requests and starts looking for a
circus … to steal and circus employees to recruit.
Fortunately for him this dimension is full of people
who could work in a circus. On his unusual quest,
Alexander, will meet a whole bunch of unique and funny characters.
The humor
of
the game is its no 1 strength. It is quite mean-spirited,
so if you have a problem with this sort of humor, it
might not be your cup of tea. If you do not mind some
strong language here and there however, then this game
is going to keep you laughing until the very end. It also
contains the best knock-knock joke. I’ve ever heard …
and which is also making its way around my university
campus as we speak. But don’t expect me to tell it to
you over here, play the game and get to read it over
there. Generally speaking, the dialogues of the game are
top-notch.

Some of the unusual characters
Alexander gets to meet, include some… hanging children, an impolite
fisherman, some cricket players, a lousy comedian, a
blind xylophone tuner, a giant bird and Welk among
others. Who’s Welk you ask? A gullible creature that
you’ll have to meet, trick and fool in order to complete
your mission. Alexander himself is obnoxious, meanspirited,
arrogant and cares only for himself but hey, if
you worked as a poop boy I’d bet you wouldn’t be
much better yourself now, would you? The length of
the game is also satisfactory. It took me roughly
speaking 3 to 4 hours to finish it. I was disappointed
when the game was finished, not because it was really
short, but because it was really fun to play and I craved for
more.

Graphics: Well
if you’ve played Monkey Island 1 or
2, you get the idea. The characters look excellent and
if you are a pixel-fan who longs for Sierra/Lucasarts kind
of games like myself you’ll feel right at home with
this one. The backgrounds range from great looking to they
could have been given a bit more detail here and there.

I
think that Cirque De Zale is the closest
any adventure made with AGS has reached to the original games
of
the former Lucasarts … with the possible exception
of Indiana Jones Fountain of Youth, but this one is not
ready yet. Rebecca Clements also went the extra mile
and designed a new image for the GUI of the game,
based on the Lucasarts interface but adapted for
the theme of Cirque De Zale.

Sound: Probably
the only part where the game feels incomplete is its audio. The
game has
only a few
music tracks here and there, and these of course are not
the best you’ve ever heard, but taking into consideration
that this whole game was made by one woman alone
and that it is being distributed for free, it feels
even unnecessary to complain. There is no speech
throughout the game, but from the choices poor
voice acting and no voice acting at all, the no voice acting
at all is definitely the way to go.

Gameplay: The
gameplay and the story is where Cirque De Zale (excuse
our language) kicks ass. Especially
after completing the move-these-levers-around-with-noclues-whatsoever-Syberia
2, Cirque De Zale felt like an oasis among the desert. It seems
like all the money
you
are
paying
for
when you buy a commercial adventure
game, goes to the graphics artists and the
musicians behind a game. But this little complaint of
mine apart, let’s go back to Cirque De Zale.

First of all the tasks
of the game are logical (within the
context of the story) and also very fun to
complete. You always know what you have to do next since
the goals of the main character are always clear from what
he says himself.

The non playable characters
will mostly need a favour from you in order to give you something
back or join
your circus and if you forget what each character
wanted you can always go back and ask them
again. Overall, the feedback that the player receives
from the game is always adequate and the player usually does
not have to resort to trial and error or guessing.

But even
if you get stuck at some point there is so much different fun
actions to try that you never get
bored by playing it. The pace of gameplay
becomes therefore very smooth and you won’t find yourself
stuck looking at a still picture. The interface of
the game is the well-known and successful interface
used in

the older Lucasarts games. Rebecca Clements also made
sure to use the right mouse button for
default choice
of
command, something that sometimes AGS
developers don’t pay much attention to. Although it is a small
detail, it makes the game much more comfortable to
play. You can save and load games by pressing
the F5 key from your keyboard. You are offered 99 save game

slots which should be more than enough and this large
save slot availability is definitely more
than welcome, especially for those who like to replay certain
parts of
their favourite adventure games.

General
Info: The game is available as a
free download from http://www.anime.com.au/Katt/misc/cirque.zip.
It is a pity that it is available for
free
if
you want
my personal opinion because it is certainly
much more entertaining than other adventure
titles
available for purchase in your local
stores.

I encountered two minor
bugs while playing the game.
The first one is that if you try to press
escape or F5 during the very beginning of the
second part
of
the
introduction (just when Alexander
is transported to the
other dimension) the game crushes.
The second one occurs in a couple of locations when
you try to
enter a door, Alexander will walk to
the center of the room

instead – but he will still enter the next room, so in
essence none of them is a big deal
and none of them detract from the overall experience.

In a few words… Since
the King’s Quest 2 remake this is the most entertaining adventure
(and I include
both
commercial and non-commercial adventures)
I have played. It is a must play
for Monkey Island fans
and

fans of Lucasarts adventures in general.

I hope and wish
that Rebecca Clements plans to release more adventures
in the near
future, whether
they
are sequels to Cirque De
Zale or
totally new adventures.
She has the knowledge and expertise of
story-telling and game design that many developers
lack nowadays.

The only advice we
could give to Rebecca is maybe a bit more detail to the backgrounds
and we
hope
that some
people with music and voice
acting talents could support this woman’s fantastic
talent in game
development. Other than that,
we hope that she will
keep up the excellent work.

Final Grade: B+

System Requirements: