Boxed Dreams, a German
developer, brings us Ceville – a wonderful throwback to classic
adventure gaming. Published by Kalypso, the game has a very Kyrandia
feel to it. As a matter of fact, I found myself feeling so reminiscent
of that game that I went ahead and replayed the Legend of Kyrandia
– enjoying that game once more after having completed Ceville.

You
find yourself playing the most unlikable, yet strangely loveable character,
Ceville – the recently deposed king of Faeryanis. He’s
mean, rude, sarcastic and all ’round not-so-nice guy. The game begins
immediately after your very own citizens have seized your kingdom.
Not to give up one’s throne so easily, your goal is restore
your version of order and reign over your subjects once again. While
the plot is pretty straight-forward, the path to getting there will
be filled with homages to adventure games of the past, witty dialogs,
memorable characters, and loads of slapstick comedy.

Interface

Ceville is played in 3rd
person point and click style which is really the only way to truly
appreciate it. With a game so heavily dependent of a large cast of
characters, comical actions, and heavy dialog, there is no other way
to expect it. The mouse icons were easy to make out and straightforward
– hand to grab, gears to use, etc.

I
did have trouble running this game on several occasions. A run time
error would occur and bounce me out to windows, even with the patch
applied. It was quite upsetting when I realized just how long it had
been since saving and how much I would have to replay, but upon reloading
the game; the developers had gone from me cursing their names to instead
heaping praise on them. The game Autosaves! Now there is something
that practically all other genres have enjoyed for years, but has
been mysteriously lacking in adventure games. Unlimited saves and
autosaving, finally a developer who got it right.

Sound
and graphics

Graphically
the game is vibrant with the artists using a rich variety of colors.
Its bright, bold, comical and it works very well. The only downside
might be the lack of an anti-aliasing option as some of the edges
were jagged, but this was a minor nuisance. You can change your screen
resolution, so no matter what type of setting your system has, the
odds are that Ceville supports it – even widescreen.

The voice acting was quite
good and fit the cartoonish nature of the game. I would suggest turning
on the written dialogs because there were some points where Ceville
was talking to Lilly while close to some guards who were also having
a conversation and things got a little muddled together.

I’m not a fan of
dialog-rich games, so I was quite happy that you could speed things
up a bit by clicking through them. There were so many dialogs in this
game that I think had I been forced to listen to them all in their
entirely, it would have greatly diminished my feelings toward the
game. Again, I have to give the developers praise for this.

Gameplay

The
puzzles are mainly inventory-based and to me were very straightforward.
I never found myself stuck for a prolonged period of time and there
was enough variety in the scenes and situations to keep things from
becoming stagnant. Double-clicking the edge of the screen will quickly
take you to the next area, which is common nowadays, and a very welcome
feature.

All in all, I have a hard
time coming up with anything bad to say about this game from a technical
point of view. There is just so much that the developers have done
to keep the players from getting frustrated. I have to admit that
I’m surprised that there are still games being made today that
do NOT take these things into consideration. In this regard I can
only praise what Boxed Dreams have done here.

It’s also by no means
a short game coming in at 10-15 hours of playing time. How much you
enjoy it is heavily dependent of how much you enjoy listening to large
amounts of dialog.

Conclusion

With
all the technical stuff aside, how you feel about this game will be
heavily dependent on your own tastes because it is such a niche game
– heavy dialog, comedy, and a cartoon. Within that category
of adventure games, I think Ceville will rank pretty high on gamers
lists.

There is also the danger
of creating a comedy themed game – it’s so subjective.
Personally I didn’t find myself having any laugh out loud moments
because many of the jokes seemed…well, old and kind of silly
and more geared towards kids. At best the jokes are cute, but most
of the time you might let out a slight groan.

While I did find myself
enjoying this game and walking down memory lane to early adventure
games like the Kyrandia series, I couldn’t help but feel like
there really wasn’t anything new here. The occasional rare crashes
were also a bit of a nuisance even though the autosaves kept those
events from turning into such a catastrophe that you’d stop
playing. All in all, it was just a very solid adventure gaming experience,
although I would have a really hard time recommending it to anyone
other than those who enjoy this type of game.

System Requirements:

• Windows® XP/Vista
• CPU: min. 1.6 GHz
• RAM: 512 MB
• Free disc space: 2 GB
• Graphics card: 128 MB,
  DirectX® 9