London in "Heir of the Dog" is bigger than I thought...

I can't help but see Hugh Laurie and Mark Williams in these roles...

After my first hours sniffing around in Heir of the Dog, I recognize the similarities but also the differences with Lucy Dreaming. The graphical style and the user interface are exactly the same. The pixel art is gorgeously detailed, but since it's Victorian London, don't expect bright colours. While many humoristic adventure games go the extravagant cartoony way, Heir of the Dog contains lots of browns and greys. There are only four verbs to choose from, which feels like a very good compromise between the obsolete nine-verb system and the often too easy one-click interface. The four verbs allow for enough humourous reactions without becoming too much to handle in production. And while in Lucy Dreaming the biggest questions were often in which dream you could find the next solution to your problems, in Heir of the Dog it's mostly which physical form you need to take on.

You have to admire the dev's inventiveness...

I encountered the game's first brainbusting puzzle. Disclaimer: I did play a beta version, so this puzzle has since been altered to make it more accessible. When I faced it, I had to take seven screenshots to keep a better overview, whip out a calculator, and even then I wasn't able to solve it. Of course, I flunked Math twice in my "academic" years, so that might have something to do with it... The puzzle itself is actually quite ingenious and fully integrated into the game's world, so I felt rather bad that I just couldn't get past it. Thankfully for my ego I wasn't the only tester who was having trouble with it, so the dev "dumbed" it down a bit for the likes of us. Though I know of some people who just love spreadsheets and who will never forgive me for this...

Looks like a trail...

Once I solved this puzzle, with a lot of help I must admit, I could continue my search for my uncle. I was finally able to talk to the residents of the dog pound, where I met the lovely poodle Sally who was perfectly willing to help me, in exchange for a jailbreak of course. Several inventory puzzles and item assemblies later I Michael Scofield their way to freedom and I got a new lead. The next puzzle had me counting again, figuring out the length of a chimney sweep and finding the right way through a flue. After some stupid errors on my part, causing me to run back and forth to the chimney sweep store again and again, I finally triumphed and got yet another lead. Problem was, this time it pointed me in the direction of the dense pea soup fog hanging over the Thames, blocking my passage to the other side of London.

Quite the posh gathering...

That's when an entirely new location opened up: the mayor's mansion! Behind a locked gate earlier, now the time had come to gain access to this abode in order to procure my ticket out of this part of London: a ride on a hot-air balloon. With the help of some urchins, which took some personal convincing first, and once again lots of changing back and forth between man and dog form, and dealing with some more hilariously eccentric characters, and one wicked little feline... But getting that ticket wasn't enough. Another devious puzzle had me literally programming a couple of lice into a sewing pattern, which took me several tries as well. It was easy to deduce which pattern I needed to use, but it was the correct order and movements of the lice that did me in.

How do you fly this thing?!

Last time I hijacked a hot air balloon in an adventure game, I just had to click on two buttons to change directions and rise and descend. The Algerian desert was a lot easier to maneuver and locate the German dig site at one of Atlantis' lesser colonies. When I tried to navigate the London skies in Heir of the Dog, however, apparently I completely missed how I could activate one of the on-board control systems. So I found my way after some trial and error and using three more screenshots as reference guides. Getting close to ten hours of playing time by now, I'm starting to wonder how long this game will actually be... Because I'm sure this new part of the city will do its best to keep me very busy as well...

You can find Heir of the Dog on Steam and on GOG!