Hamlet, or the Last Game Without MMORPG Elements, Shaders, and Product Placement (yes, this is its real title) is a puzzle game from Alawar Entertainment with a very strange premise. You are a scientist who, through an unexplained mishap, travels back in time and lands on Hamlet, knocking him senseless. It is now up to you to rescue Ophelia and defeat Claudius.
How does one do this? Simple: You guide your scientist through a series of 25 puzzles of varying difficulty, occasionally stopping for a boss battle along the way. Each of those puzzles is self-contained. There is no inventory management, so you don’t have to worry if you are carrying the correct colored rock from puzzle #1 to defeat the final boss, and everything you need to complete each puzzle is contained within that puzzle. This is not to say that every solution is obvious; occasionally you may need to consider the circumstances of the previous puzzle to gain some insight regarding the solution to the current puzzle.
See? No MMORPG elements, shaders, or product placement!
The interface is very simple; you use the mouse to point and click. If the element you clicked on has something to do with the puzzle, it will activate.
There is a hint system in the game, and thankfully it is not a method to cheat your way through. Hints come from two sources—clicking on the scientist will reveal his thoughts on what must be done for the puzzle, but if this isn’t enough, after several minutes an additional hint will be provided by a question mark icon in the lower right corner. Clicking this icon will provide a clue about how to actually complete the puzzle. This is not a spoiling clue, however; it is merely a gentle nudge in the right direction.
Graphically, the game is exactly what it needs to be and nothing more. There aren’t fancy effects artificially driving up the system requirements, and what effects there are serve the story and puzzles well.
This is a short game if you are good at solving puzzles. My first run through the game took three hours, including several interruptions. Average playtime is expected to fall between three and four hours. There is a good range of puzzle difficulty—some solutions are obvious, some are difficult. Most fall somewhere in between. Exactly one solution exists for each puzzle and there is only one story to be told, so replay value is limited.
Overall, the game is enjoyable, but as mentioned above it is extremely short and has almost no replay value. Compared to a movie in the theater, the cost and entertainment time are roughly the same. There are other games out there that cost the same or less which provide far more playtime, but they do also fall into different genres. If you’re ok with this, the $10 price of Hamlet might be worth it. If you prefer more depth or longer play time in your games, this may be one to skip.
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