Lemony Snickets A Series of Unfortunate Events Demo

When books are turned into films, it is only a small step to add a video game to the equation as well, as long as the title in question can be developed in order to expand the universe, or give you the chance to experience the same events from a more personal point of view. While the former option is rarely the case, the latter was the main reason for the game at hand as well.

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events follows the path of the movie and presents the same events all over again, only this time you get to be the one controlling the characters and fighting the villains. However, since the game is basically a third-person adventure game, most of the action is oriented toward solving puzzles and even some minor platforming, although the term minor does not imply it is less annoying and frustrating.

Just like in the original series, the three characters are Klaus, Sunny and Violet Baudelaire, although you get to play as each one of them, depending on the tasks that need to be tackled along the way. Hence, while Violet is extremely talented at coming up with brilliant inventions out of common items she finds laying around, Sunny uses his supreme biting power to eliminate obstacles in a matter of seconds.

The entire purpose of an adventure game is to put your mind to work and force you to think out of the box in order to solve the puzzles and advance through the story. In this case, though, you don't really have to put in too much mental effort, especially since you are basically given all the hints you might possible require. On the other hand, the game is aimed toward a younger audience, which might be the cause for the poorly-designed puzzles.

A thing that cannot be disregarded as intentional is the control scheme and the basic character mechanics, since they are very difficult to handle in some situations and make the aforementioned short platforming sessions extremely painful for anyone. The collision system could have definitely used more work, because you often find yourself falling without actually leaving the platform you are standing on.

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events has a few aces up its sleeve as well, such as the funny narration, good voice acting and the well-made environments, although they are very small and linear most of the time. The graphics are cute and they should please the target audience.