Wonderland Quest
Although Wonderland Quest has the look and feel of a point & click game, it rather plays as a linear side-scrolling puzzle adventure. It’s a little casual game designed as a sequence of small rooms containing a few puzzles each. Progressing to the next room can be done only after everything is solved in the current room, and once you step into a new room, you won’t be able to go back to the previous location. The puzzles are thus contained, and unlike in classic point & click games, there is no back-and- forth movement between locations (apart from two exceptions where the locations contain two, respectively three scenes). There is also no inventory to store picked-up items: once you find an object you will immediately use it.
The best part of the game is by far the puzzle design. These are specially conceived so that your hero will do all sorts of mischievous things to other characters to achieve his own goals (like modifying a recipe so that the cook uses more chili peppers than he should, with the outcome of him urgently needing water to quench his tongue). His actions never have a malicious intent and what you’ll get to do in the game is ultimately harmless, yet very fun. Wonderland Quest makes sure to never cross the line in that regard or be offensive in any way to the player.
The puzzles are mostly intuitive and quite easy to figure out, but there will be certain scenes in which you’ll still need to engage in some pixel-hunting to see what objects are expected to be picked up. Coming up with ideas on how to use them afterward is the other fun part of the game. Unfortunately, at the moment there is no hint system in case you’re stuck, nor a hotspot map that reveals the items you can interact with.
Despite being really short and without clear narration, the story feels extremely abundant due to the multitude of amusing things your hero will get to do in the game. It only took me a bit over one hour to finish it without needing a guide, but it was certainly a joyful and entertaining experience, albeit one without replayability value.