Once again, I find myself reviewing another great point and click games, but this one was made in the present, rather than some of the classics, such as the Monkey Island series. I can’t help but feel that Justin Wack and the Big Time Hack owes its own existence to games like the Monkey Island series, so much so that it references it as an Easter Egg.
So what is this game? I’ve played about a few hours of it, and it involves time travel to the ancient past and the far-flung future. It begins when a typical cubicle-dweller Justin Wack puts a strange snack in a microwave, and since there is metal involved, it opens up a portal in time. Yeah, that’s about as seriously as this game will take itself.
Justin goes back in time into prehistoric times, where hairy men and dinosaurs live together. Yeah, I don’t think fossilized records show any era where this has occurred, but hey, for the sake of this story, it is happening. Apparently, a robot from the future has been sent to deal with this situation, because those darn robots are always coming from the future to stop us fleshy humans from doing…something.
What is interesting is when Justin went back in time into caveman times, a caveman from the past came forward into our time. Now, I’ve only been playing this game for a little while, but this caveman doesn’t seem to have much to do. However, the player is able to switch between Justin and his caveman time traveler, and I’m guessing that solving the game has to do with switching back and forth between the two eras. At least, most games that I have played like these make that a requirement to beat it. You can’t just stay in one era and solve all kinds of puzzles, right? As I have said before, I have been playing the game for a few hours, and most of the puzzles that I have solved have been in the prehistoric era.
I have to admit that the puzzles of this game are not very straightforward. I’m finding several of them difficult, particularly one which involves setting a trap. This is one of those games that has inventory puzzles, which means that you are using whatever you can find, and then combining items to solve puzzles. This, of course, leads to more puzzles, and I can’t help if whatever Justin Wack does in the past will affect the future, or his present.
I think that Justin Wack and the Big Time Hack is trying to be an homage to old-school point and click games, while also attempting new things within them. If you are interested in this, head on over to the Warm Kitten website to read more information about it, and check it out for purchase on Steam.
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