New game: "Powers in the basement" playthrough

New game!

I played through Powers in the Basement and finished it in one hour and fifteen minutes!

This game is totally free (I played it on Steam), so if you're a fan of the Lucasfilm/-Arts classics and got some time to spare, do look it up!

You play is Will Phail, who is looking for his heavy metal T-shirt to go to a concert. You'll have to solve plenty of inventory puzzles - after ten minutes I had collected 25 items, and no idea what to do with them!

Pretty orderly compared to my son's room...

It uses the standard SCUMM-like interface with nine verbs on the left and inventory on the right. What I like best are the unique replies. Each hotspot has its own description, and never once does it feel like simple filling. There's so much detail in the backgrounds of both the main character and the place he lives, that it makes for a very believable world.

I miss my own grandparents...

After you've located your precious shirt, you need to get your grandmother to iron it. Problem is, there's no electricity. There's something wrong with the power in the basement, the generator is out, so Will will have to fix it.

I don't trust that cat...

There are only five locations to explore, but I still found myself traipsing back and forth, looking for places to use all my inventory items on. It's not all THAT logical, perhaps, and turns out some places I had to inspect even further, while at first they didn't seem to give any results.

Couple of easter eggs to be found here...

There's also one puzzle requiring some simple mathematics, but turns out you have to solve it in a different way still, with no indication whatsoever that you have to do it that way. You need to make some kind of potion, which needs a set amount of ingredients, and I was looking for a way to cut my ingredients in half so it would fit the recipe, but turns out I had to multiply everything instead, which doesn't make any sense to me to be honest. Then again, I never was much good at math...

Succes!!!

Other than that, it's a fun little game in the style of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and The Secret of Monkey Island. I'm very curious to see what these developers will do next!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2520280/Powers_in_the_Basement/