With a name like Mr. Smoozles Goes Nutso this game is one that people would either look at in curiosity or immediately dismiss. I mean… look at the name. It’s an offshoot from a web-comic but not a particularly well known one (also it was released in 2006…). I was almost immediately ready to turn it off but actually it grew on me pretty quickly, then nearly made me brain dead.
It’s a simple looking game, with clear cartoony visuals, which actually do have a fair bit of character. I liked the animation of the characters that move about, though why the main character, Ed, runs like a zombie walks confused me, but that isn’t really relevant.
It’s pretty much an old school point and click adventure game, a genre that I love, but also a genre that can infuriate me pretty easily. Games like Monkey Island or Broken Sword are great games with great dialogue, and a lot of charm, which can offset the ‘what the hell am I supposed to do!’ anger. This game, however, not so much.
I didn’t mind walking back and forth for a while in Monkey Island or Broken sword because there was always the idea that there’s something obvious that you’ve missed, but in Smoozles I was often wondering back and forth through the same 3 screens trying to pick up anything at all as a clue. The missions you will get will usually include ‘Get this item to get this key’, so you go to the place to get said item, but nope you’re told to go to another place, and so you do, and then you’re told to go back to yet another place. It’s one of the worst ways to extend the playtime of a game, and Smoozles is full of these moments, and the problem is that it will be so obvious but the game assumes you’ve forgotten past interactions with items.
One of the worst for me is when my character was tasked with getting an item called the ‘Heffletimpleburpler’ from one of the characters from earlier in the game. I was told to go and talk to him about it, and the game just didn’t let me talk to him, nothing was said. So after wandering around for about half an hour, I went into his room and examined the safe in his room, then prompting me to go and talk to him. Point is, I’d checked this safe many times before this mission, why would the game assume that Ed the Cat would forget about the safe? 
Best thing about this game is the music, which sounds a lot like PSone era Final Fantasies, and it was the awesome music that actually kept me playing. For a while. When you’re walking back and forth with the same areas for a long time and the music has looped for the hundredth time, it really starts to lose its charm. It isn’t backtracking I hate, but when you have to go back through only about 3 screens and that seems like it’s taking too long, you know that there’s something too slow and aimless about the game.
Even with all the complaints I still kept playing, so there is something about this game. It has some charm, even if it’s pretty hard to find a lot of the time, and for a free game it’s pretty good. My favourite thing about it was the old war veterans, Cyril and Cedric, who’ve lived together for 25 years and are just sitting complaining about each other for the most mundane reasons, until you mention the war and then it goes quiet. Maybe it’s all a metaphor about how people try to cover up their problems with mundane arguments? Probably not.
Click the image below to downlaod the game.
