Gameplay: Interface
There's a lot to be said about this so allow me to ramble a little bit. First and foremost is the control interface. It's a bit of a pain in the beginning because it's so simple: you get the arrow keys to move Shamley around, a button to make him run, a button to make him jump and a button to make him perform an action-any and every action. Oh yeah, you also get mouse control to move your magnifying glass around, highlight clues and interact with a PDA that serves both as a notebook and system menu. It really is a scheme suited for a game pad, but there was no native game pad support to be found, alas.

Once you get used to keeping both hands on the keyboard and off the mouse (this is way old school-I swear Kings Quest 3 had more mouse interface than this) the game is decently playable. As I said, you pretty much use your action key for everything, opening doors, turning on lights, pushing buttons you name it. The appropriate icon appears in the upper left corner any time you approach something you can interact with, so it's simply a matter of moving your character around until you've found something of interest. The mouse only really comes into play when you're examining something up close-such as searching a body or unlocking a puzzle-and when you are selecting something inventory for use in the environment. Even there, kudos to Arxel Tribe for streamlining the key interface: you amass quite a collection of keys, but there's no need to hunt for the right one as in other adventure games. As long as you have the appropriate key, the door automatically unlocks and the PDA pops up telling you what key you've just used.