I’d say that the Whispered World is a definite candidate for my personal favourite adventure for this year. The puzzles were intelligently designed, not as easy as some of the other adventures I played this year, and they often gave me this feeling of “Oh I get it!”. Looking at screenshots one could have had the feeling that it’s similar to The Book of Unwritten Tales, but the setting and tone is largely different and for me the humor is also a bit more funny.

The whole game is done with a lot of love for small things, such as a very large amount of dialogue for all kinds of item combinations, there’s almost always something better than the standard “I can’t do that” response. Also with regard to the story, a lot of initially unrelated things come together very nicely while playing.

There are only two negative points about it I can think of. In the last chapter, there’s a sliding puzzle, and I hate sliding puzzles. Of course I get it how they are solved, but somehow I always mess it up. And the copy protection must be a joke – you have 3 dodecahedron-shaped dice, from which every time you start the game a symbol has to be read off. And on top of that, there’s a regular DVD copy protection which half the time claims that the original CD is not in there. If it helps with the game’s sales, ok, but it’s a large nuisance compared to the otherwise great experience.