So patient are monks that, even in times of unsolved murder mysteries, they manage to keep their composure and solve conundrums at a leisurely pace. At least that’s how the monks behave in The Abbey, a point-and-click adventure that asks you to have the patience of a friar.
Known as Murder in the Abbey to PC gamers, the game’s storyline delves deep into the hidden underground world of your favorite religious devotees. You play Brother Leonardo of Toledo, a monk sent to escort his teenage sidekick, Bruno, to the Nuestra Señora de la Natividad Abbey to participate in a study with the resident monks. As soon as you arrive, a stray boulder--as huge as the one Indiana Jones ran from--attempts to run you both off the road. You soon learn that another monk has been recently killed, so you presume that the boulder was planted by whoever committed the murder. As you venture further on, Leonardo assigns himself the daunting task of investigating the mysterious murder at the abbey.
While the animation is a nice departure from the usual game aesthetics, the constant dialogue leaves much to be desired.
The gameplay is very basic: point and click with your left mouse button to move around the map, and right-click to select an object, clicking it again to add to your inventory, which can be permanently docked on the right side of the game window. Every cutscene is integral to figuring out the end result of the murder and brings you further clues about where to explore, but if we picked the wrong question for Leonardo to ask, we would often leave the conversation without a clue as to what to pursue next. Considering that The Abbey isn’t exactly an intricate role-playing game, your only real objective is to pick up every item that’s selectable and then experiment to see which ones interact with which characters. Some puzzles are easy to figure out, while the answer to others may be hidden in one of your long conversations with the various characters around the monastery, so be ready for some chatter.
The animation of the game is truly unique, throwing us back to the days when Don Bluth’s films were on loop in our VCRs, and the voice acting is remarkably on point. However, we found controlling the characters to be frustrating. Not only do Leonardo and Bruno walk at an unhurried pace, but playing the game in windowed mode made it difficult to maneuver our characters to the right or left. Such bland gameplay made this point-and-click adventure seem more like a “point-and-sit-and-watch.”
While the game does redeem itself with that terrific animation, the dialogue is often too dense to get any sort of storyline out of it, and the end result just doesn’t seem worth going through the hassle of trial and error. A novice or occasional gamer may find The Abbey engaging enough to pick up for a few hours, but don’t bet on them finishing it.
Wonderful cartoony aesthetics. ESRB rating: Everyone 10+
Annoying controls. Bland gameplay.
