Developed by Realmforge Studios and published by Kalypso Media, Ceville is a real throwback to the golden age of adventure gaming (or, depending on how you look at it, among the first titles in the new golden age of adventure gaming). You play initially as the tyrant Ceville, who?s not much of a nice guy, and whose people are revolting against him ? you have to trick the stupid guards (not very difficult), but the chef into cold storage and escape from the castle. Then you play as the clueless, narcissistic hero Ambrosius, to stop him escaping. You manage this but then with the help of a little girl called Lilly, Ceville escapes. Eventually all three of them team up to stop the real bad guy in the story, the sorcerer Baracus, from taking over the empire and subjecting it to a reign of absolute terror. (Ceville is still pretty much a bad guy, but more in a lovable, mischievous way ? apart from maybe his torture chamber, but definitely not as bad as Baracus.) Lilly sort of acts as Ceville?s conscious, which is handy as he doesn?t really have one.
Ceville is set in a richly detailed 3D world, with gameplay that definitely evokes memories of the Monkey Island games, but which has its own unique charm. The interface is excellent, and the graphics are generally very good ? one or two slight glitches with the camera position maybe, the colours and blurring seem a little extreme at time, but overall it?s still very cartoony and high quality. The music is okay, didn?t do all that much for me but I didn?t dislike it, and the voice acting was generally very good (the odd sentence or two had the wrong inflection or just sounded wrong, but nothing major). The load times between scenes were quite long, but to help compensate for this the screens shown during loading were often useful or funny (sometimes both).
The game?s plot is kooky and bizarre, and the whole setting is like a sort of inverse fairy tale. Almost all of the characters in the game are deliberate stereotypes, and they?re very funny ? in fact while the dialogue is often very good, the most fun can often be obtained by simply stopping doing anything and listening to what the NPCs say to each other in the background. The way the stereotypes are developed is also fun ? for instance, elves are nature loving hippies, while the Ambassador of the Heroes is a who tells you tales of how she started out defeating rats on Newbie Island before going on to greater things. Adventure games in particular get lampooned here, but RPGs along with movies and music are frequent targets of the humour used in the game ? sometimes a bit too obviously to be really funny, but often with hilarious results. Expect to meet a good fairy, a black knight, a lisping dungeon lord and a zombie pirate among others... Realmforge Studios even make fun of themselves in the quest for humour.
The game is split into 5 Acts, though the first and last are much shorter than the 3 main ones in between. The game is a nice length, perhaps a little short ? according to Steam we took 15 hours to complete it (though that did include some baby-rocking and nappy-changing time!). The puzzles are mostly good, logical, and inventive; we did have to look up a hint on a couple of occasions. It felt nicely balanced on the whole, not too difficult / obscure, but not too easy either (some real adventure game veterans may find it a little on the easy side). In the rare places that the game itself didn?t quite continue its high standards, the humour more than made up for it.
You will enjoy the game more and understand more of the parody references if you?re an adventure game fan, but it?s not entirely necessary ? if this is your first adventure game, you should still enjoy it. You play 4 different characters in all, albeit one of them only very briefly, and the interaction between them, plus the teamwork you need to use, is very good. There is a genuine difference playing the game as the different characters too, and an interesting control idea used in the very last act of the game. As mentioned the interface is extremely well designed, which is always a plus point!
The biggest problem with the game is that it occasionally crashes for no apparent reason ? the other glitches in the game are forgivable, but this one?s really annoying. However despite this, Ceville is definitely a game that all adventure game lovers will want to play. If you consider yourself to be an adventure game fan, Ceville should most definitely be in your collection.
Ceville Minimum System Specs:
OS: Windows XP, Vista (should be okay on Windows 7?)
CPU: 1.7GHz
GPU: 128Mb (GeForce 68xx series)
RAM: 512Mb
HDD Space: 2Gb
DirectX version: 9.0c
Tested on: Packard Bell iPower X9810
Ceville Screenshots:
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