In Alex and Eugene Plotnikov's point-and-click adventure Aldo and Gus: The Skeleton Key, you play a cat in an enchanted flying tea-kettle (no, you're ridiculous) who's trying to rescue their dear wizard who was locked up in a dungeon for, well, wizardry. You'll need to hunt for a key to help him escape, which is easier said than done given the propensity for puzzles this jail and the surrounding area appear to have. To play, just click, and your cursor will highlight yellow when it passes over something you can interact with. You can use items in your inventory by clicking them to pick them up, then clicking again wherever you think they should go. There are a surprising amount of scenes to explore here, so it's easy to get overwhelmed at first, though once you know where everything is, things start to become clearer. Most of the puzzles are fairly straight-forward, requiring you to use the proper item in the right place, or unlock doors by spotting the proper codes for them, though not every object has an immediately obvious use. What makes Aldo and Gus so charming, however, is its wonderful surreal style, using simple shapes and bright colours to create imaginative environments that feel like something out of a Tim Burton film. It's weird in an eye-catching way that makes you want to explore it, though with so much going on in some scenes, it isn't often clear at a glance what's useful, so you'll want to waggle your cursor everywhere in case you missed something. That, combined with the way the cursor's colour can get washed out in some places making the highlight hard to see, makes the game feel a little rough around the edges, but Aldo and Gus: The Skeleton Key is still a wonderfully strange little game that makes us hope we see more of this pair down the road.
I'm stuck. I have:
I think I need a code for
Information overload! There's just so much scenery in this game, I don't know how to tell what is or isn't a clue! Help! (No solutions please, I just want a solid hint of what I should be looking at.)
Lysana,
Thanks, Dora! I didn't think I could click there. :)
Look carefully to see where your cursor highlights.
I did. The highlighting is inconsistent. There's probably a pattern to what lights up and when, but as the game review says, there's some polish that seems to be missing.
Anyway, I finished the game an hour ago. Thanks, though.
i played this a couple days ago when bart bonte posted it...
loved it... yep :)
For the clock tower door, I just brute forced it. Only remembered 2 symbols, though.
Very nice, one of the most enjoyable point-and-clicks I've played in a while. A couple of parts could have used better cursor highlighting to let you know they're clickable. Other than that, it's well done, with beautiful, surreal landscapes.
It's quite like an elaborate version of an escape from Flash512 game devoloper. You place odd bits and pieces in the correct odd part to get your next bit. And that's the whole of the game, just correctly placing bits.
@brian...
back in the old days of adventure games (think MYST) one had to take pages and pages of notes... i still do that...
no need to force a puzzle if you already recorded the clue :)
I am out, but just curious if there were multiple endings? I had items, clues and puzzles that I thought would still need to be used/solved. For example:
Over all I liked the game, just felt like I needed to do more than I did to get him out of jail.
Hello :)
As to the other two things you mentioned, I don't remember off the top of my head at this moment, but I think that solving
Walkthrough
I have chosen to keep the solutions and navigation aspects of the walkthrough separate as I have found that hints in how to navigate the environment have aided me to proceed on my own without resorting to reading through the solution themselves. I apologise if it's messy.
Navigation and interaction
White navigational arrows appear at the edges of the screen to show where you can proceed. The pointer arrow changes to yellow when you hover it over an item you can interact with.
Exploration
Solutions (in order of solving):
How do I get the small green bell in the room with Owl?
To get the green bell:
Cute game but too tricky in places I thought. Premise and animation were very night though.
Also confusing I ended up with a
in my inventory that I never used.
Update