Animal Download (1997 Adventure Game)

Animal is a product tie-in to Unilever brand Peperami, a spicy pork salami sausage. The 'Peperami Animal' was launched in 1993 advertising with the slogan 'It's a bit of an animal'.

This surreal adventure takes place in the town of Snackopolis, where tension between cookies, vegetables and other snack-creatures is on the rise. Just before the mayoral election, the current mayor and top candidate Dr. Pepereinstein is kidnapped while he is cloning Peperami. In addition, the cloning device was tampered with, with horrible results. As Peperami, a walking and talking sausage, you investigate and seek to rescue the mayor and to clean up the mess left from the cloning.

You explore over 130 hand painted locations around the city, talk to other snacks to find clues, solve puzzles, and fight the bad guys. The game is a traditional point and click adventure with the exception of two DOOM-style first-person shooter sections at the end of the game.

Animal by Microtime is one of the most obscure adventure games ever made. A wacky adventure set in the world of talking foodstuffs like sausages (!), Animal is a decent point-and-click game that tries to be funny, but falls far short of standards set by Discworld or Toonstruck . The plot: the town of Snackopolis is thrown into chaos after the mayor Pepereinstein has been kidnapped. As a walking, talking sausage named Peperami who works for the mayor, your job is to investigate and rescue the mayor to restore order to the city.

The game unfolds in a typical fashion: explore various locations around the city, interrogate other snacks to gain clues, solve puzzles, and defeat the bad guys. Most puzzles are banal and uninteresting - I especially dislike the fact that *fighting* is the only way to 'solve' many situations. Whatever happens to the good old days of "violence is not the solution"? On the upside, most characters - being lowly snacks that they are - have funny things to say, and 2D graphics are well-drawn and animated sequences funny enough to compel you to play until the end. Most jokes are too sophomoric and gross for my liking, though: they are much worse than, say, Leisure Suit Larry or Spellcasting series. I think the designers don't quite know what 'tongue in cheek' means. Regardless, if you enjoy bizarre adventure games that are on the easy side, and can stomach (no pun intended) cheesy and gross humor, Animal is worth a look.

How to run this game on modern Windows PC?

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