This one-week review comes early because I actually finished the game. Two days ago. Ben There, Dan That! (BTDT) is an adventure game that pays homage to LucasArts’ adventure games of the 90s. I’ve only played through the Monkey Island series so a few of the references I didn’t recognize or was not too familiar with. Nonetheless, it was a fun game, if a bit crude in the humor department.

BTDT is a point-and-click adventure game but instead of having a whole host of verbs/actions to use, there are only a few: examine, select, chat, and use Dan. BTDT’s storyline is fairly simple and starts off right in the middle of the action. You play mostly as Ben and the very first puzzle you are tasked to solve is figuring a way to resurrect your buddy Dan. Once done, Dan follows you around like a NPC and provides quips to Ben’s dialogue. The basic premise is Ben and Dan get abducted by aliens and end up in their spaceship. Their apartment door is the way back home, but it is locked. They have to go through a series of other doors, which lead to alternate London universes, to find keys and eventually make their way back home.

I was a little disappointed that the instructions on how to play the game were in the browser, rather than in the game itself. True, the 90s adventure games had instructions on printed manuals, but those games also came on a series of CDs and a physical box. One of the better, modern design decisions is walking the player through the controls they need in order to play the game, rather than expect them to tab out to a browser. I got an animated arrow pointing to the top of the screen where a slideable tray will appear with inventory, save, load, and exit options. I found it a little odd to have the Examine and Select options within the inventory, but I found out its placement made more sense later in the game.

That said, I thought I was only limited to Examine and Select. I was not aware of additional actions like chat or “use Dan” until I was checking out a FAQ. The right click button will cycle through the actions so you don’t have to keep mousing to the top of the screen to change actions. Once that was figured out, things moved a little more smoothly. The only caveat is the cycling through of actions with the right mouse button can get tedious, especially when you want to go back and forth between Examining and Selecting because the two actions are right next to each other, but has to cycle from Select through Chat and use Dan just to get back to Examine.

I found the art style to be amusing as it was very simple and, at times, seemed to have been done in Paint. The sort of whimsical nature of the art, including quips about the silly animation walk of Ben and Dan, matches well with the dialogue and solutions to the puzzles. The music, even, was a bit whimsical and matched the various types of areas (e.g., space, volcano, frozen world) that the two characters found themselves in. The soundtrack wasn’t distracting and went well with complementing the game.

The humor was a bit crude in some places. Ben and Dan are British characters, but I felt that their British-inspired lines were dropped towards the end of the game. It could be that I had gotten used to the various British terms, but from recollection, it felt the “accent” was much heavier in the beginning of the game compared to the end. There is a scene in which Ben and Dan enter an American bar in an alternate London universe (London becomes a state of the U.S.) and there’s a bit of bashing on the drink preference. There is another scene involving a cow. Ben and Dan enter through its mouth and exit out the other end. The very concept of entering a cow’s mouth, disguised as a doorway, gave a fairly large hint about the nature of the alternate universe they were about to enter (a “superhero” world).

I was most amused by the large number of references to LucasArts’ older games, namely, Monkey Island. The first puzzle included a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle which is used to transport Dan from a familiar looking jungle cliff scene to a small island. The two characters even have a LucasArts logo on the floor of their apartment. Ben is called Guybrush at one point. There’s even the line, “You fight like a cow” and the appropriate, “You fight like a dairy farmer” response (I think this is modified slightly because if I am remembering correctly, Ben uses this as a pick up line).

I would recommend this game to players who appreciate the “lost art” of adventure games. It is a bit dated (original release in 2009), especially with references to 90s adventure games, but is worth playing through. The puzzles are simple and not too difficult. I admit I was a little impatient and used a guide in some points, but the game is short enough I might have been able to finish without a guide (although I would have needed the initial look up because I don’t think I would have figured out the right mouse click part).