Replaying
Goblins 3 after several years... and remembering a surprising amount of the puzzles.
Playing the game also reminded me that when I first played it, I took all its wonderful cartoon logic and surreal imagery for granted. Wow. You start out on a flying ship, then later adventure as a giant, in miniature format, as a werewolf, grow wings to visit cloud realms, try to manouvre a ball of pollen into the nose of a giant with an insect companion, or manufacture potions and elixirs in a laboratory. And that's only some of the game. The last screenshot alone has: a pool full of eyeballs; an Escher-style 3d labyrinth; a miniature dragon; a funfair ride; a portal into a cloud realm; a magic mirror; and a hero split into human and werewolf halves (floating goldfish not depicted).
Things also look weird as hell. Pierre Gilhodes, who did the graphics for several Cocktel Vision games, can draw bizarre grinning skeletons and strange monsters like nobody (nobody
except classic D&D artist
Erol Otus), and his material transcends photorealism. It is fantastic, funny, and I wish there was more like it.
What I mean to say, Goblins 3 is high fantasy in the sense its creators must have been high all the time. And not even the better modern adventure games recapture this kind of strangeness.
[edit]The GOG download has both the CD and floppy versions. The first has a few extra scenes and speech, but the second has much, much better
music.