Brain-twistingly surreal, wittily written and beautifully drawn, the Knobbly Crook lifts point-and-click adventures to new heights while retaining classic puzzles. And all for free.

Despite its surreal approach and the cartoon violence of its plot, this is the kind of the game that leaves me with the kind of warm feeling I get when I watch a Wallace and Gromit animation. It even has cute (although potentially lethal) tribble-like creatures by the boatload.

When I say surreal, I'm not just saying there are some wacky characters who say some slightly out-there things. We are not in Borderlands, we are on a totally different plane of existence.

I'm saying this is a full-on, brain-baffling, sick, warped, renaissance-era mystical fantasy version of our world where exploring means diving into the acid-filled bowels of a giant, flying flesh-and-wood horse upon which you are travelling. A place where the horse-ship's captain lives in a dark hole and has a sextant for a head and a hammer for an arm. Where a beefy living rock handler wears oven mitts, has a colander for a helmet, is armed with kitchen spatulas and yet still manages to look tough. And that's leaving out the weirdest things, the ones I don't even know how to describe.

When it comes to the plot, the best summary I can come up with is that once-peaceful paper farmer O'Sirus is given a mysterious quest by ... someone, to do ... something, for ... some reason. That's seriously about as clear as it gets, but that doesn't matter. It's the charm of setting out on an adventure and meeting a range of funny, friendly, cute or hostile characters so far outside any reference points you're familiar with that you can't help take them at face value. That's what makes this game fun. You won't ever forget the people you meet on this journey, all distinct and memorable, from pocket sized Pokémon-types to room-filling hulks.

You will not have seen characters like this before unless you've smoked a lot of things you shouldn't, or you've played a lot of Zeno Clash.

One area I thought the game might fall down on when I heard it was an Adventure Game Studio (AGS) game, was graphics, as indie projects can't usually match the quality of their ideas with their writing and production quality.

But Knobbly Crook's bizarrely talented writer, artist, designer and voice actor, Ubisoft's Ethan Petty, doesn't do things half-a s s e d. (Look no further than the huge horse's a s s in the game, which he built with enough spare room to fit a bar into.) This is the kind of game you get from someone who's worked on often over-serious mainstream projects like Assassin's Creed, Watch_Dogs and Rainbow Six, now working on their passion project, and taking it as far away from those as possible. That experience pays off in this little indie title that hits big with brilliantly original and sparkling writing throughout. We have this intriguing parallel world with such an alien way of life, physical laws, and morality to our own and yet that echos our world in interesting little ways, keeping us on our toes in a really engaging way.

Visually, we have the best-looking game I have ever seen made with AGS, with incredibly intricate mouse-drawn HD graphics that are part Mayan sculpture, part steampunk, part science textbook, and part hardware store. You'll want to explore every inch of each screen, not just to hunt for interactive objects as is the old-school adventure way, but to hunt for meaning in the assorted symbolism and just to appreciate the sinister beauty of it all. With the animation, we have nice multi-layered animated characters and occasional brief, endearingly weird close-up cutscenes at key points. The only things I felt were lacking were a couple more cutscenes showing the consequences of the player's actions as a pay-off for what we were promised earlier in the chapter, possibly with a cowering captain in tow.

With the sound, we have the fully-voiced, or I should say, fully-growled, dialogue that's a demonic-sounding version of English matching the deranged and murderous characters perfectly, with an amusingly contrasting jolly folk guitar soundtrack by Pitx.

The adventure gameplay itself is the one area where the game doesn't try to break any moulds. You get the quests, hunt the items, mix them up in your inventory, and bring them back to advance the story. It's a pity that such a forward-looking game still has separate Walk, Look, Use, Take and Talk actions that need to be switched between by mashing your right click button, when left click and right click should do for such simple puzzles. Also, at a couple of points in the game, it's necessary to complete an action that isn't quite logically connected to the current goals in order to progress. Of course, as Petty has stated, this is a nostalgia project, so these gripes are partly a design choice and are pretty much standard for retro adventure games. I just don't feel that they add anything entertaining. The fact that this and a couple of absent cutscenes are the only significant criticisms I can make says a lot about the quality of the finished product.

If you're a point-and-click adventure game fan who remembers not just the puzzle mechanics of the 90's golden age, but also their offbeat black humour, this is the game you've been waiting for.

Excelling in design in multiple areas, notably the visuals and astonishingly creative and original story and characters, plus the free price tag, an open-minded adventure gamer of any persuasion would be crazy not to download The Knobbly Crook. It's a great joy to see what happens when someone finally makes the kind of game that inspired them as a kid.

Brain-twistingly surreal, wittily written and beautifully drawn, the Knobbly Crook lifts point-and-click adventures to new heights while retaining classic puzzles. And all for free. Despite its surreal approach and the cartoon violence of its plot, this is the kind of the game that leaves me with the kind of warm feeling I get when I watch a [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb0ooQKbflM]Wallace and Gromit[/url] animation. It even has cute (although potentially lethal) [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2T1QX7BEyg]tribble-like[/url] creatures by the boatload. When I say surreal, I'm not just saying there are some wacky characters who say some slightly out-there things. We are not in Borderlands, we are on a totally different plane of existence. I'm saying this is a full-on, brain-baffling, sick, warped, renaissance-era mystical fantasy version of our world where exploring means diving into the acid-filled bowels of a giant, flying flesh-and-wood horse upon which you are travelling. A place where the horse-ship's captain lives in a dark hole and has a sextant for a head and a hammer for an arm. Where a beefy living rock handler wears oven mitts, has a colander for a helmet, is armed with kitchen spatulas and yet still manages to look tough. And that's leaving out the weirdest things, the ones I don't even know how to describe. When it comes to the plot, the best summary I can come up with is that once-peaceful paper farmer O'Sirus is given a mysterious quest by ... someone, to do ... something, for ... some reason. That's seriously about as clear as it gets, but that doesn't matter. It's the charm of setting out on an adventure and meeting a range of funny, friendly, cute or hostile characters so far outside any reference points you're familiar with that you can't help take them at face value. That's what makes this game fun. You won't ever forget the people you meet on this journey, all distinct and memorable, from pocket sized Pokémon-types to room-filling hulks. You will not have seen characters like this before unless you've smoked a lot of things you shouldn't, or you've played a lot of [url=http://steamoss.com/steamstore/app/22200/]Zeno Clash[/url]. One area I thought the game might fall down on when I heard it was an Adventure Game Studio (AGS) game, was graphics, as indie projects can't usually match the quality of their ideas with their writing and production quality. But Knobbly Crook's bizarrely talented writer, artist, designer and voice actor, Ubisoft's Ethan Petty, doesn't do things half-a s s e d. (Look no further than the huge horse's a s s in the game, which he built with enough spare room to fit a bar into.) This is the kind of game you get from someone who's worked on often over-serious mainstream projects like Assassin's Creed, Watch_Dogs and Rainbow Six, now working on their passion project, and taking it as far away from those as possible. That experience pays off in this little indie title that hits big with brilliantly original and sparkling writing throughout. We have this intriguing parallel world with such an alien way of life, physical laws, and morality to our own and yet that echos our world in interesting little ways, keeping us on our toes in a really engaging way. Visually, we have the best-looking game I have ever seen made with AGS, with incredibly intricate mouse-drawn HD graphics that are part Mayan sculpture, part steampunk, part science textbook, and part hardware store. You'll want to explore every inch of each screen, not just to hunt for interactive objects as is the old-school adventure way, but to hunt for meaning in the assorted symbolism and just to appreciate the sinister beauty of it all. With the animation, we have nice multi-layered animated characters and occasional brief, endearingly weird close-up cutscenes at key points. The only things I felt were lacking were a couple more cutscenes showing the consequences of the player's actions as a pay-off for what we were promised earlier in the chapter, possibly with a cowering captain in tow. With the sound, we have the fully-voiced, or I should say, fully-growled, dialogue that's a demonic-sounding version of English matching the deranged and murderous characters perfectly, with an amusingly contrasting jolly folk guitar soundtrack by Pitx. The adventure gameplay itself is the one area where the game doesn't try to break any moulds. You get the quests, hunt the items, mix them up in your inventory, and bring them back to advance the story. It's a pity that such a forward-looking game still has separate Walk, Look, Use, Take and Talk actions that need to be switched between by mashing your right click button, when left click and right click should do for such simple puzzles. Also, at a couple of points in the game, it's necessary to complete an action that isn't quite logically connected to the current goals in order to progress. Of course, as Petty has stated, this is a nostalgia project, so these gripes are partly a design choice and are pretty much standard for retro adventure games. I just don't feel that they add anything entertaining. The fact that this and a couple of absent cutscenes are the only significant criticisms I can make says a lot about the quality of the finished product. If you're a point-and-click adventure game fan who remembers not just the puzzle mechanics of the 90's golden age, but also their offbeat black humour, this is the game you've been waiting for. Excelling in design in multiple areas, notably the visuals and astonishingly creative and original story and characters, plus the free price tag, an open-minded adventure gamer of any persuasion would be crazy not to download The Knobbly Crook. It's a great joy to see what happens when someone finally makes the kind of game that inspired them as a kid.