B.R.U.C.E. Saves Christmas is a point-and-click adventure game created by Bewilder Box in Brighton, England.
Format
Style of Play: point-and-click adventure game
Required Equipment: computer with internet connection
Recommended Team Size: 2-4
Play Time: Listed as approximately 60-90 minutes, but no limit. Our reviewers played significantly faster.
Price: £20 per team
Booking: purchase and play at your leisure
Description
This is a Christmas-themed multiplayer point-and-click game with video clip cutscenes. When one player solves a puzzle, it is solved for all players. Due to the collaborative nature of the design, each player needs their own device and this game cannot be played solo.
Style of Play: collaborative point-and-click adventure
Required Equipment: computer with internet connection, pen and paper
Recommended Team Size: 1-4
Play Time: about an hour
Price: £15 per team
Booking: Once you have ordered, a confirmation email along with instructions and a product key will be emailed to you and you can start playing.
Image via Bewilder Box
Description
Sector X: The B.R.U.C.E. Project was a point-and-click puzzle adventure in the style of a short Lucas Arts game from the ’90s. The twist was that we each had a cursor in the game and when we clicked, all teammates saw the result of our action.
Because of this twist was one reviewer recommends that “in order to see all pieces of puzzles at the same time, you need to screen capture images of puzzles” and another recommends “for the full experience, I would strongly urge you to play in the browser and not screenshot.”
This was a delightful, collaborative puzzling experience. The interface was really well designed for multiple players to access it remotely. We could see each other’s cursors on screen and could all take turns controlling the navigation. I would recommend either having a pen and paper handy or the use of photo editing software to aid in your solving. We also ended up taking a lot of screen grabs. The game was a charming mix of good puzzles and bad robot humor!
The Lone Puzzler’s Reaction
⭐⭐
Rating: 2 out of 3.
There are two reviews for this game: If you are good with managing multiple screens, taking screen shots of puzzles, etc., this game can be a lot of fun with humor and solid game play – worth playing. If you are not as tech savvy, this game can become frustrating (as it was for me) as the game allows all players to click on the various puzzles at the same time – effectively changing everyone’s view. Since solving puzzles typically required looking at two or more of the clickable objects at the same time, it ultimately forced me to print key pages to play. Best played with 2 or 3 people who work very well together to fully enjoy the nice puzzles and team interaction.
Bewilder Box’s escape room-y take on the classic Lucas Arts point-and-click puzzle game was first and foremost hilarious. The 5-stage game played out as a streamlined point-and-click puzzle game with a light narrative underpinning the whole thing. As a twist, each player had their own cursor within the game and we all saw each other’s clicks in real time. It was neat.
It was frustrating that the game felt like a tug of war with my teammates. The net effect was that we went crazy taking screenshots of things (which added other complications). Really, I loved the setup and structure of this game. However, I felt like the puzzles were in conflict with the concept. We should either have been solving puzzles that required lots of action on the screen or we should have had parallel, collaborative paths. Splitting the difference undermined the otherwise amazing concept and execution.
This game promised a sequel and I have such high hopes for it.
