The Will of Arthur Flabbington

I have a soft spot for small studios that punch so far above their weight that you have to double-check the credits. Gugames is, by most accounts, a solo European developer, and The Will of Arthur Flabbington is their full debut - a comedy point-and-click that quietly collected awards and a 94% positive Steam rating while the algorithm buried it under bigger releases. That story alone made me want to sit with it. You play as Jack Flabbington, a nephew cut out of his uncle Arthur's will, who makes the reasonable decision to phone up a psychic and give the dead man a piece of his mind. The séance goes sideways - naturally - and Jack ends up spiritually tethered to a completely wrong ghost named Artie, who is annoyed about the whole arrangement and not especially motivated to help. The bickering between Jack and Artie is the game's engine. Their sarcastic back-and-forth carries you through a small-town treasure hunt involving feuding elderly friends, a suspicious amount of pizza, and a cast of eccentric NPCs that the writing treats with genuine affection. The comedy lands more consistently than most games that try for it - there's dry wit, some low toilet humor that the game at least has the grace not to over-rely on, and a handful of moments that are genuinely funny rather than just quirky. The core loop is classic inventory-puzzle adventure: examine objects, combine items, exhaust dialogue trees, use Artie's ghost abilities to possess certain characters and access otherwise-locked interactions. The possession mechanic is used cleverly and with restraint, showing up as an elegant solution to specific puzzles rather than a gimmick sprinkled everywhere. Puzzle design is the game's biggest strength - most solutions are logical, satisfying, and arrive with that small flush of pride that good adventure design always delivers. The game throws a lot of open threads at you simultaneously once the first act settles, which is a deliberate choice to keep you always feeling like you have options rather than brick walls. That said, a handful of puzzles cross from challenging into obtuse, demanding a kind of trial-and-error logic that feels inherited from the genre's less patient ancestors. Having a walkthrough tab open during the rougher stretches is a completely reasonable play style here, and the game's tone invites rather than punishes that. Visually, the pixel art operates at a precise 320x180 resolution that commits fully to a retro aesthetic. The backgrounds are vibrant where they need to be - the park scenes especially have warm, lively color work - and character animation is smooth enough to carry personality. The cemetery location gets a notably rougher pass than the rest, and some areas feel less detailed than others, but the overall visual identity is coherent and intentional. Voice acting across the full English cast is a genuine surprise for an indie at this scale: expressive, well-directed, and a core reason the character chemistry works as well as it does. The soundtrack leans perky and electronic, well-suited to the comedic tone, though some players may find it a bit relentless over the eight-to-ten-hour runtime. For anyone who grew up with LucasArts or Sierra adventures, or who keeps a quiet wishlist of modern games that honor that tradition without irony, this one delivers. It knows what it is, it knows when to end, and it treats its own jokes with enough craft that they actually work.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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