Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchmans Mine review

This is a game from another decade, and it’s definitely not the ’90s. A time when adventure games had lots of screens, many of which were just graphical interludes to walk through. Where your inventory quickly swelled with dozens of items, and visual clues telling you what to pick up were considered patronizing.

Al Emmo isn’t just old-school; it’s total old-school immersion that’ll thrill genre-lovers and the pathologically curious. It does its best to be funny, with an every-line-as-joke approach similar to Sam & Max. Some of the jokes hit the spot, especially the knowing in-jokes about the shoddiness of the medium. But, it doesn’t always work. The humor too often sails past the predictable and ends up paddling in toe-curling waters. Focus on the hits, and you’ll finish Al Emmo with some fond memories. If you’re an unforgiving sort though, you might just end up with a fist full of broken pixels.

Interacting with the environment uses a similar method to Full Throttle, where you can interact with anything using your hand (examine), eyes (get/use) or tongue (speak, or prompt a terrible joke about licking or kissing whatever you’ve clicked on, just like Full Throttle). It’s not as elegant as the LucasArts implementation, but serves its purpose well enough.