This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
Sprill was just a fox relaxing on his boat in the Bermuda Triangle. He didn’t expect to be abducted by aliens who drag him to the bottom of the sea. These aliens are from the planet Akvtar and they aren’t leaving until they’ve found a rare pearl called Poseidon which will show what their civilisation was once like. As Sprill you’re forced to search sunken ships for any sign of this lost artefact or you’ll never be allowed to reach the surface ever again!
An attempt by Alawar Five-BN to create a game mascot Sprill: The Mystery of the Bermuda Triangle (2008) is misguided and often lacking thought behind it. The idea of an anthropomorphic fox abducted by aliens not from space but from below the sea is a cool idea and the comic book panels that tell the story aren’t bad for this budget game yet there are major issues with almost everything else. For one: tonally it’s off. It’s all very cartoonish with its fox hero, obviously aimed at kids yet the aliens themselves are pretty ruthless and threatening. I mean they’ve sunk many ships, killing countless innocent people in the process all for their insane search quest. A couple of skeletons belong to the dead crew are still in the ships you explore. Add to the other major problem being the objects you need to search for on each screen can hardly be found. It’s a common problem among HOG developers being the need to overfill screens with stuff which is made worse with this game having a time limit regardless of how you play. You have to wonder who this game is aimed at? It doesn’t help the game is repetitive in the extreme with too much padding. You search the same types of rooms again and again with no story progression. For some odd reason the lead developers have a strange obsession with inserting Jason Voorhees’ hockey mask from the Friday the 13th series into most screens while inserting photos of themselves into scenes as well. Some of the logic puzzles that are interspersed vary from obvious to expert difficulty. The I Owe U’s you get from these puzzles don’t amount to anything but a character roll call by the end of the game. Another common problem some of these games have is you click on an object a couple of times and it doesn’t register the click which wastes time you need due to the countdown. Or you need to find a goblet, you click on one but that’s not the goblet the game wants you to click on so that’s more time wasted due to poor programming. Hints are also difficult to find and you will need them.
Sprill: The Mystery of the Bermuda Triangle seems to have been a cynical attempt to create a mascot but its artificial padding and boring gameplay make this a HOG that perhaps should stay at the bottom of the sea.… Expand
