This game takes a fantasy setting, in which you play a young wizard tasked to fulfill the prophecy and eradicate a power-hungry wizard Kraal, who has just returned from exile. To fulfill the prophecy you must go on 3 quests, solving various puzzles along the way to be rewarded with 3 grains of sand, that must be placed in a hourglass to kill Kraal. Then Kraal starts interfering and you have to overcome the obstacles he creates, and race to fulfill the prophecy in time.
Like in other Coktel's adventures (including Gobliiins series and Lost In Time), the interface is simplified, and the game has a heavier focus on self-sufficient puzzles than other traditional adventures. Objects around the levels are always detected by the cursor, making each screen and the challenges within quick to comprehend. Generally you have to solve each puzzle in sequence. The game experiments with the toning of the graphics, using a faux-sepia style outside and some bright colours inside, which changes the atmosphere somewhat.
This Video Game contains examples of:
- Bag of Holding: Justified, thanks to Uki and Orbi, who volunteered to carry everything.
- Bag of Spilling: Between some scenes, thanks to Uki and Orbi. And Urm takes away stuff that was meant to be used in a previous scene, if you tried to save it for later. And Ween himself throws away some objects after a single use. This limits your choices in subsequent puzzles, thus simplifying them.
- Big Bad: Kraal. Trying to take over some small backwater kingdom, but still qualifies.
- The Chosen One: Parodied in one scene. Ween finds a sword in a stone, tries to pull it, fails and concludes that he is not the chosen one. Then Urm points at the hook holding the sword in place.
- Damsel in Distress: Opale and Guardian of Revuss to a degree.
- Evil Laugh: Kraal in every cutscene. Since the game lacked the sound of his laughter, the actor had to play it with his body. Worked surprisingly better than it sounds.
- Guide Dang It!: Some puzzles are somewhat contrived. To remedy that not only you get usual Coktel's "jokers"note , but also your companion Petroy can advice you on the purpose of some objects you see. Still, some rules are hard to grasp:
- Venom/poison turns snakes into quartz and quartz into snakes.
- Pollen similarly turns quartz into flowers and back.
- You can melt gold in a copper cauldron.
- You can hold acid in a copper cauldron. While chemically sound, this is quite uncommon for such games.
- Ring, tiara and necklace turn copper ball into cauldron, pipe and sword respectively. And vice versa.
- To find stuff in an empty chest you need a feather dropped by the monster, that appears only when you give up and try to leave the scene.
- Ween can play flute even as a worm.
- Good luck trying to figure the code to activate the fountain. It's not that hard. Just look at the squiggly line. That's a hint. Start with the highest number, then the second lowest, then second highest, then lowest number, or 12-4-6-3.
- Hollywood Acid: Sickly bluish-green fluorescent liquid stored in a wooden coffin, can be carried in a copper cauldron. Dissolves only carbonates, but does it really fast. Used by ancient builders to conceal the control panel. And causes hallucinations.
- The Klutz: Uki and Orbi. And you can't send them away. And Urm. Who solves only slightly more problems than creates.
- If you thought Urm can't get any worse, in the final scenes he gets cursed with clumsiness.
- Live-Action Cutscene: Short, looped live-action scenes are used to depict characters speaking to the player. These scenes are heavily tinted so as to better blend in with the background graphics.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Urm looks like a large drooling fruitbat with long fangs and eyes burning red. If you give him fruits or berries, he will give you gold. Or set something on fire. Or perform some other scripted task. Also he tends to fly into things and break them. And defecate with gold in the most inappropriate moments. It's unclear, why he is called vampire. Lost in Translation?
- Pixel Hunt: Somewhat eased by names that appear when the cursor is over the hot spot. Still, there are:
- Several scenes, where you need to find a spot 1-3 pixels wide.
- And the one where you have to click an unmarked 1x1 spot multiple times.
- And the bug randomly preventing names from appearing.
- Prophecy Twist: It is said that the valiant hearted must place 3 grains of sand into the hour-glass to seal the doom of Kraal. If they are placed by a mechanism or Urm, Kraal is safe.
- Shapeshifter Showdown: Against a "dragon with a hundred faces". Whatever form Ween takes, the dragon always chooses a slightly stronger form. To win, make him become a wasp, catch him with a wasp trap and call Urm. You get the hints for the battle in a previous scene and before that from the messenger after sniffing acid.
- Sliding Scale of Linearity vs. Openness: Level 2 at best. Basically, the game is a sequence of room escape games with an inventory (mostly) carried to the next room. Still, some objects and puzzles are optional, some subpuzzles have several solutions, and there are places, where you choose which path to take (over/under the bridge and 2 doors after the sanctuary). None of this affects the ending.
