The Astonishing Captain Skull

The Astonishing Captain Skull, at first glance, looks almost aggressively weird. Once you gain control of your character, though, you'll find that, despite it's aesthetics, it's actually pretty normal for an adventure game.

Story
Captain Skull is on a mission to investigate the murder of a ghost researcher. Over the course of his investigation, Captain Skull will talk with a talking canine lab assistant, reptilian scientist, a no-nonsense toad, and other such oddities. Despite the weirdness of the character design, their personalities are grounded, which creates a nice anchor that keeps the game from drifting into total absurdity. At the same time, most of the characters don't provide much in terms of entertaining dialogue (save for Vermillo, the comically self-centered creature in charge of the research center).

I found uncovering the central mystery to be engaging, but the game didn't have much of a payoff when the killer was revealed. I think this is in part a problem with the short length of the game, which didn't give a lot of space for the characters to develop. Most of the people only required one dialogue exchange (with multiple topics of discussion, at least).

Graphics
The graphics are what people are really going to remember from this: I felt like I was walking around in a Primus video. The game's sets were shot from little dioramas that contained props and characters made from clay, foil, legos, and various odds and ends that gave the game a distinct feel.

Music
Most of the time, you'll hear the same atmospheric track, but it does a good job of maintaining an alien, mysterious feeling. The track that bookended the game was a weird fuzz heavy piece, but it fit in a disjointed sort of way that matched the game's aesthetics. The only thing that I didn't like about the soundtrack was the little sound that accompanied Compu-Tor. This was so high in the mix that it cut through the music and was abrasive in an okay-I'm-turning-off-my-speakers kind of way.

Gameplay
When it comes down to it, this is a pretty standard point and click adventure. Most of your time will be spent culling information from dialogue. Like most point and clicks, I got stuck a couple of times, but catmitts included a walkthrough. For the first time I got stuck, I basically knew the solution, but the object that I wanted to click on wasn't registering as clickable--until I went a few pixels down. The second time, the solution made sense, so I'm the one to blame for not figuring it out. So, for the most part, I found the puzzles to be fair. Just don't alt tab; that glitched out the game for me.

The top part of my screen was obscured by a piece of the texture from the title screen, which unfortunately made some of the dialogue unreadable. I don't think I missed anything from this, but it was annoying, especially since the dialogue for this game is important.

Overall
Despite its bizarre aesthetics, The Astonishing Captain Skull is a normal adventure game that's a little rough around the edges. It's worth a play mainly for a visual treat, and while its short length means it's not going to overstay its welcome, it's also not going to stick around long enough to really dig its hooks into you.