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At first, I didn´t really believe my eyes when I read Stuck In Attic´s Kickstarter text for their upcoming horror point-and-click adventure game “Gibbous: A Cthulhu Adventure“. And why is that? Well, I just thought that the “a mix of HP Lovecraft and LucasArts epic adventure games from the 80s and 90s” part sounded too good to be true. However, luckily enough I was wrong, because even though the “Gibbous”demo is rather short. I still got a really good picture of what Stuck In Attic is trying to achieve with their game. So right of the bat, the graphics look absolutely fantastic. And I felt in love with the two playable characters right away (Buzz and the talking cat Kitteh, and there will even be a third playable character called “Don” in the full version of “Gibbous”).

gibbous a cthulhu adventure the creepy girl

This little girl is creepy as hell.

I also love the fact that “Gibbous” is made in Transylvania (I´m a huge fan of “Count Duckula“), and you can really tell that by the theme of the game (the horror setting, the jokes and the monster references). Then you got voodoo, Cthulhu Mythos and plenty of Lucas Arts vibes (their top adventure games from the 80s and 90s) on top of that. Let´s just say that I enjoyed that combination quite a lot. And thanks to the very talented voice actors in “Gibbous”, my gameplay experience became even better. I have to admit though, so far I like Kitteh the most (both the character and the voice actor). And who can blame me? Because she´s a freaking adorable talking cat (she has some really bad attitude problems though).

gibbous a cthulhu adventure the blond lady

Buzz had very little (to none) success with this blond lady.

And quite frankly, there are very few down sides to the demo. Nevertheless, I did find some cons that I would like to point out. Like the fact that you can pick up a lot of items, but most of them can´t be used in the demo at all. So that resulted in a lot of trail and error situations for me (at least the demo had the courtesy to point out very early on that you can´t combine items in the demo). I also encountered a pretty serious bug while playing the demo. And that would be the bug that accrues when you talk to the taxi driver before you talk to the blond lady. You see, if you don´t talk to the taxi driver first. Then you won´t be able to finish the demo at all. As you won´t be given the right dialog option that will allow you to progress to the next part of the demo.

gibbous a cthulhu adventure the voodoo gentleman

Tim Schafer? Is that you?

Nevertheless, I still had a blast with the demo. And one should also keep in mind that the demo is based on a very early alpha build of “Gibbous”, in other words, nothings final whatsoever. So “hopefully” we won´t see a lot of trail and error parts in the full version of the game. I also hope that the problem solving parts will be of logic nature as well, because I don´t enjoy adventure games where you have to try everything on everything in-order to solve a puzzle (or whatnot). Other than that, I´m quite curious to find out what the third playable character “Don”(Don R. Ketype, he works as a private eye) is all about.

I would also like to point out that there are plenty of pop culture and video game references to be found in the demo (how many can you find?), for example. Take the self-proclaimed “voodoo gentleman”, he looks quite a lot like Tim Schafer (well, at least, in my opinion). There are also jokes and dialogs that hint about games such as “Monkey Island” (the bananas, the voodoo masks and the Schafer-like voodoo gentleman) and “Sam and Max” (the “people from the street” part).

So with that said, I wish the folks over at Stuck In Attic the best of luck on Kickstarter. And if you´re into point-and-click adventure games. Then you should most definitely download and try the “Gibbous” demo yourself. Trust me, you´re not going to be disappointed!

Pros:
+ Awesome graphics
+ Very good voice actors and dialogs
+ Funny jokes
+ Kitteh
+ Three different playable protagonists (full version)
+ Lovely characters
+ Voodoo

Cons:
– Trail and error from hell
– A lot of items that you can´t use or combine
– Bugs and dead ends (you don´t know what to do at times)