Way back in the stone-age days of gaming, when disks actually flopped and exploring a new area meant swapping in a new hunk of black plastic, Sierra’s ‘Quest’ series of games captured my imagination. Many a rainy day was spent huddled around the tiny monitor of my friend’s tan Apple IIe endlessly scouring every nook and cranny of those artificial worlds and crawling inside the designer’s head to decipher what ridiculously convoluted combination of items was required to advance the plot. The narratives of Police, King’s and Space Quest may have not have been terribly original, but they captivated our imaginations and were compelling enough to keep us sucking down Barq’s root beer and typing in some crazy suggestions.
Clover: A Curious Tale borrows much from the Sierra methodology of adventuring, much to its advantage and detriment. You aren’t going crazy if the title sounds vaguely familiar; it’s actually a port of a PC title and an update to an existing (now-inferior) Xbox Indie. The update packs in plenty of recorded dialogue (it’s fantastic) and new puzzles (they’re hard). It combines a fantastic art style with a compelling narrative and some frustrating mechanics that results in a flawed, but enjoyable adventure.
