Igor is a tale of one being's search for his lord and master, and turns into a journey complete with deceit, betrayal and lots of odd characters. You play the role of Igor, who returns home to the castle after running an errand to find that his master is missing and the butler is dead. Now you must discover where your master has gone and who killed the butler. Along the way you'll solve several puzzles, meet plenty of wacky characters, and ultimately be presented with three different ways to end the story.

The story is actually somewhat interesting, but more importantly, it's very entertaining talking to the different characters. They usually have plenty to say, and often times you'll end up going back to a person more than once to get everything you need from them. It's nice seeing a cast of characters that are both well thought and actually useful at the same time. The puzzles, on the other hand, while usually solvable fairly quickly, aren't always the most sensible. For instance, early on you must capture a newt, and there's no reason (at least that I'm aware of) that the bait used would make any sense. It's not that I have anything against creativity, but if puzzles aren't necessarily going to make logical sense, there should at least be something in the game to clue you in on how to solve them.

The interface was very nicely handled, given the restrictions of screen resolution. To interact with a given scene, you simply click on the screen. If you click on an object that can be interacted with, a symbol will pop up representing each action you can take. These actions usually come in the form of look, talk, take and use. So far it seems like pretty standard fare.

However, Igor has a nice little interface bar at the bottom of the screen. The first button on the bar brings up the menu, which lets you save, load or exit the game, among other options. The second button, which looks like a small globe, brings up a map that allows you to travel between the major locations in the game. Some of these are then broken down into individual scenes. The last two controls represent your inventory. The arrow button pulls up a list of all your current holdings and allows you to choose one as your active item. This item will then be displayed in the final control of the interface bar. If you want to actually use the active item, click on the text in the control panel and the background will turn red. You cannot do anything other than try and use an item when the control button is red.

To use items with each other, click on Igor. You will switch to the inventory screen, where you will have a list of items, with the currently selected one in red. You will see a picture of the currently selected item as well. If you want to use that item with another item in your inventory, click on it. If it can be joined to another item, you will be asked to select another item to use with it. The only thing you can't do is drop items, but used items will automatically be discarded from your inventory.

As with pretty much any other adventure game on a portable platform, Igor suffers from "hunt & peck" syndrome. This is an unfortunate side effect of the fact that response from your PocketPC is driven by touch rather than simple movement, like the mouse on a PC affords. On the plus side, I spent a lot less time randomly clicking in this game then with most adventures I've played on my PocketPC to date. The only thing that really bugged me about the gameplay as a whole was the actual length of the game. I was at a bit of a disadvantage initially, because the version that I played the entire game through on had a couple of bugs that allowed me to do things before I should have been able to. However, were I to give a fair estimate, I'd say that the final version would contain somewhere between 2-4 hours of play time. That's not a whole lot given the current price tag of $24.95.

The graphics in Igor are somewhat of a mixed bag. The backgrounds are pretty consistently well done, and have a moderate level of detail to them. Inventory items seem pretty detailed, but have a somewhat cartoony feel. The characters are better looking than those in some other adventures like the offerings from Crazysoft, but they have a somewhat abstract look that doesn't quite fit the feel of the backdrops. I think there are some interesting styles here, but I'm not sure everything blends together as well as it could.

Each area has its own background "music", and in some areas it's broken down by scene. What's rather interesting about the music is that it's actually a combination of song and sound effects. It actually produces a rather unique feel to the soundtrack that is both well done and suits the mood of the game perfectly. As a result there aren't really and sound effects specific to any of the actions you take, but that's okay.

Overall I rather enjoyed Igor. It was unfortunate that I didn't get to play the final version, because I think I would have liked it even more playing the game in the order it was intended to take. However, it was still an enjoyable romp. Sadly, it just didn't last long enough. A little more solidarity in the visuals would have been nice as well, but that's a minor thing. As a first effort, I think Summer Goth Studios did a commendable job with this game. I hope they decide to use their engine to produce more adventure games for the portable market.

Overall Score: 7/10
Product Page: Igor Page
You can try or buy the game for $24.95 here