In the realms of fiction, academia has produced some of our greatest adventure seekers. From Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones, Jr. to Flynn “The Librarian” Carsen, academics and adventure seem to go hand-in-hand. So is it any wonder that a young professor’s assistant by the fateful name of Laura Jones would find herself on an adventure that, while not as exotic as those of her spiritual predecessors, is fraught with its own brand of dangers? In Laura Jones and the Gates of Good and Evil, adventure is as close as the university campus.

Laura is a recent archaeology graduate from the university. Her archaeology professor, Professor Adams, summons her to work on a super-secret project. But, when Adams goes missing, she finds herself on a quest to locate several missing artifacts scattered around the campus, all part of a mystic key that holds the fate of the universe. These artifacts will not be easy to find. A number of interesting characters around campus hold the clues to their whereabouts, and you’ll have to talk with them all and, in many cases, help with other tasks in order to complete your quest.

While Laura Jones is at its heart a seek-and-find game, a number of different gameplay types come into play. The most common requires you to perform different tasks with the items presented on-screen. One of the earliest examples of this requires you to distract your dog in order to retrieve whatever he is sitting on. Food is not enough. You eventually need to light a fire in the fireplace in order to convince the pooch to leave its quarry and enjoy a tasty morsel, allowing you to pickup your next clue. Other puzzles will have you finding groups of objects in rooms, deciphering the differences between two pictures, and locating laundry lists of objects required for your next quest. Objects are fairly well defined and generally easy to find. There is a time-limit for the different scenes, and random clicking on the screen will result in a 20-second penalty. But with few exceptions, you should be able to complete each scene well within the time limit. I did have a few minor quibbles with some of the decisions made about the hidden objects. Some puzzles become easier when you realize that not only are they talking about actual objects in the rooms, but also what may be printed on the wallpaper, the rugs, the paintings in the room, etc. Another stumbling block I ran into had to do with a specific scene, but similar situations occur throughout the game. You are tasked with finding a laundry list of items that are required to sneak into a building at night. On the list are 2 socks. So, I find a black sock hiding in the wall. Now, I don’t know about you, but when I pair socks, I generally try to keep the colors the same. Eventually I get frustrated enough to use a hint, and it is at that point that I realize they wanted me to find a gray sock. Who in their right mind wears one black sock and one gray sock?

As you locate the artifacts scattered around campus, you will be faced with that object’s spirit, who will challenge you to a mini-game. There are a number of different mini-games, including an inlay-puzzle game, a game that requires you to feed a cat different fish (no, really), and a game that has you moving suns to use their gravity to guide an arrow to knock down an apple. The last one, in particular, is most interesting to me, not only because of its outrageous premise, but because it actually requires some true logic skills to determine the correct outcome. The fact that you can go back and play these mini-games once you unlock them for the first time adds some replay-value to the title.

Unfortunately, the adventure in Laura Jones and the Gates of Good and Evil is purely linear, giving no chance for exploration of other paths or possible solutions. This gives the impression that you are playing more of an interactive novel than a true adventure game. And as the puzzles are fairly simple, the average gamer will probably find themselves finishing the game in a brief few sittings. This shouldn’t dissuade you from trying the game for yourself, though. The puzzles are entertaining, if simplistic, and the characters are enjoyable. Why not click below and try for yourself?

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(2 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5)

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