February 15, 2015

Daria's Inferno

Simon & Schuster Interactive, 2000


Daria's Inferno is an average point and click adventure game adopted from famous MTV's animated series "Daria", with many arcade sequences and wacky problems to solve. You play as Daria Morgendorffer, who falls asleep during a class session on "Dante's Inferno" and finds herself stuck in her worst nightmare with sarcastic and annoying people from her life disturbing and annoying her with their sarcastic and nightmarish antics. The only way to escape this nightmare and wake up is to solve all five levels, which respectively explores five areas of the town of Lawndale. These areas can be played in any sequences by selecting from the main menu. In arcade sequences, you may die and will have to repeat the sequence all over again if you fail to solve the problem or overcome the hazards by avoiding them and continually hit by the violent people or other creatures, which are trying to stop or hurt you.

The original voices and characters from the animated series are featured in the game with ordinary kindergarten style of 2D graphics, mostly found in early nineties' games. While the gameplay is extremely non-linear, the puzzle solving mostly consists of avoiding cheerleaders, non-stop walking students, huge flying eyeballs and similar hazards blocking your path. The interface is traditionally point-and-click but arrow keys can also be used to control Daria's movements. In the bottom line, I would like to say that I honesty feel that this game is not a piece of cake for grown up adventure gamers but kids and teenagers will tremendously enjoy it.