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I have been playing point-and-click-adventure games since the early 90s. So I´ve been playing through classic adventure games such as “Monkey Island“, “Sam & Max”, “Discworld“, “Day of the tentacle” and “Beneath a steel sky” (and quite a few new adventure titles as well). So as you might imagine, I´m used to playing high-quality adventure games. In other words, I have pretty high standards in terms of games of that kind (the same could be said about most games in general though). So even though I had a lot of expectations from the very start when I sat down with C.I.N.I.C. Games 2D adventure game “The Wardrobe”. I still wouldn´t end up being disappointed, not one bit. On the contrary!

So, this is what Mr. Pinhead does when his not raising hell all over the place?

And “The Wardrobe” sets the mood very early on too, as you literally get tossed into the world as a dead kid (apparently, you died by choking on a plum). Well, to be exact, you play as a skeleton kid named “Skinny”. And in the demo, it´s your job to take good care of a very “special” wardrobe (my guess is that it´s magical). That´s of course easier said then done, since you (and the wardrobe) end up crash landing in a big dump yard (Skinny actually lost his consciousness twice!). And once you have shaken off the hard planning. Reality soon catches up with you. As it becomes painfully obvious for Skinny that he has to get the wardrobe down from a big pile of trash somehow.

Morpheus (The Matrix) and Frank the rabbit (Donnie Darko) tries to get into the party mood.

And that´s also where the “big” adventure kicks-off, as you (the player) must figure out a way for Skinny to get a hold of his wardrobe once again (the dump´s janitor is going to give you a really hard time on that front…). And at a very early stage I could really tell that “The Wardrobe” has been inspired by awesome adventure games such as “Sam & Max”, “Monkey Island” and “Day of the Tentacle”. As the demo is full of crazy characters, funny jokes, dialogs and items. And since most of the dialog tree´s offer plenty of options, you get quite a lot of humor per person that you talk to. That´s just the half of it though, because unlike most of the golden adventure classics from the 90s. Most of the puzzles in “The Wardrobe” are of the logical kind. So you don´t have to use the “try everything on everything” strategy all over the place.

“The Wardrobe” is full of pop culture references. I mean, just this picture alone contains TONS of examples of that.

And from what I can tell, there is no SSDD (“Sierra Sudden Death Syndrome“, meaning that the player will die a whole lot throughout the game) moments in “The Wardrobe” either. However, I don´t know if you are able to die in the full version of “The Wardrobe” (I highly doubt it, since Skinny is already dead). Nevertheless, I bet that there will be plenty of other “things” and people that will die instead (monsters and whatnot). As for the game mechanics, the user interface is really simple and flexable to use (mouse + keyboard). As you can highlight everything of importance via one single click on the space button, and you can bring out the inventory screen by clicking on your mouse wheel. All the rest is done by plain and simple point-and-click commands (with the classic “use”, “pick-up”, “examine” and “talk to” options).

Skinny really needed the janitor’s keys, so he found a way to get them.

And when I weighted up pros Vs cons, I came to the conclusion that “The Wardrobe” is a must play for fans of point-and-click adventure games (I´m far from the only person who thinks that, since the game got Greenlit on Steam greenlight in just one week!). You don´t have to take my word for it though, as you can watch me play through the whole demo in the video down below (you can also download and try the demo for “The Wardrobe” today).

Pros:
+ Awesome graphics
+ Funny jokes and dialogs
+ Colorful and interesting characters
+ Only logic puzzles
+ Tons of pop culture references

Cons:
– Bugs (crash bug at the end of the demo, and another one in the room with the big monster plant)
– There are no English voice actors in the demo
– You don´t get to know Skinny (the main character) all that much (I had to read up on the story on the game´s homepage)