Tulula: Legend of a Volcano

For those of you who are tired of all gloomy thrill and mysterious disappearances Intenium and alt.A Games have created a happy-go-lucky game that will bring you lots of goofy fun. Tulula: Legend of a Volcano can be hardly described as a challenging game, but it’s really bright and diverse. The game is a mixture of an adventure, HOG, arcade game, puzzle and even resource management game (you’ll need to restore a village). But its main advantage is friendliness. From the moment when you’re proposed to write your glorious name you feel that you’ll be praised for every move you make. If you lack the praise at work or didn’t get enough warm words for your achievements when you were a child, it’s the proper time to fill the gap!

The goal of the game is to find the lost totem stones that were scattered by evil spirit. The shaman Taboo who meets you at the very beginning of the story tells you the history of the Tulula tribe, shows you the sacred tree where your medals for completing challenges are supposed to hang and claims you to be the chosen one. After such a greeting it is absolutely hard to refuse and shut down your PC. Besides you're even proposed to choose the way your character looks like. The are 4 variants: two boys and two girls wearing cute costumes - feel free to express yourself!

There are some minor defects in the game, but they simply cannot spoil the general impression created by the marvelous graphics and the brand of humour the game was developed with.

There are eleven chapters you’re supposed to walk through and as it was noted before you’ll have to manage quite different tasks, starting with puzzles up to memory games. But the game play is done in a very linear fashion. It means that everything should be completed in a specific order So even if you know your future steps for sure, hardly you can do that before doing something that you’re expected to right now.

As for example sometimes you see that an object needs to be picked up, but you cannot do that before you find the place it can be used at. I felt that when I saw a knife in one of the scenes, but until I clicked the ropes and got the notion that I should find something to cut them, I couldn’t pick up the knife. The other thing that waists the player’s time is that all the objects go to the inventory panel first. So the knife I just picked up couldn’t be used until I clicked on the ropes and then chose the knife in the inventory panel. But these minor defects couldn’t spoil the general impression created by the marvelous graphics and the brand of humour the game was developed with.

The art work of the game reminded me of the Aztecs culture but without any malice and bloodthirstiness. All the gods that you meet on your way are happy and benevolent. So you’ll enjoy meeting them in the Spirit world during the HOG-scenes. The music seems to be unpretentious but it fits the graphics and helps to create the free and easy atmosphere.

Though some of the tasks are a little bit illogic (personally I didn’t get why I should clean the rust off the panel with the help of the oil, but not water or brush), hardly will you ever get stuck as the hint button recharges regularly and you do not have to accomplish any extra tasks to make it active.

The motto of the game is to relax and enjoy. Fortunately you’ll get many reasons for that. One of which is your loyal assistant – a monkey called Ivan. This funny creature will applaud every time you put the right piece of the puzzle to the proper place and become frankly sad if you do something wrong.

The game could be a little disappointing for the sophisticated HOG-players, but will be a real treasure for those ones who want to switch from the darkness and the moroseness of the mysteries.

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