The Devil`s Triangle (briefly: TDT) is a Monkey Island fangame and can be downloaded as freeware at Adventure-Archiv. It may appear to experienced, professional Monkey Island fans at first glance perhaps like a cheap MI2-satire. But is it really that?

Who understands fun, can be pleased about this download. Seriousness is contained rather too little in this story, what's more, it is well knitted together and an absolute comedy spectacle - for the first work of a beginner - perfect. Of a beginner I dare to speak, because the work on this game must have been really hard. It is partly a satire, but it is mainly still a fan game, on which, above all Ron Gilbert, should be proud. The logic of the puzzles is rather more unreasonable than in the original MI-games, but you can nevertheless easily find out, for which purpose the inventory objects are meant. Among some other risible, so-called action elements there is also a complement game to the spitting competition in MI 2: The race hare/turtle, where you have to pump up the hare, to have a chance of victory. Additionally we meet again many old acquaintances.

Regarding sound and music, we are reminded more and more of the times of Monkey Island 2 - Le Chuck's Revenge. Most musical themes from the original game were taken up here. I itemize some examples: The entry melody of Largo LaGrande, the LeChuck-music, the MI 2-soundtrack. As additional entertainment factor serves the music of Offspring, the Spice Girls, etc. and the music of Gabriel Knight, as well as of Lucas Arts games like Indy, Zak McKracken, and, and, and ....

The missing saving function is unpractical. Since however dying is impossible in the game, animations can be skipped with shift and one chapter isn't too long, so you can tolerate this fact. Every of the 4 chapters can be played first and also independently from the others. Altogether 4 files must be downloaded, unpacked and installed. The game control is by no means complicated, but easier than the new Lucas Arts keyboard control, which was used with Grim Fandango for the first time. Exactly in the same way you can move your hero with the arrow keys and use the numerical keys 0 - 6 to apply inventory objects. Thus combining objects becomes really easy in this game. You can try really fast all possibilities one after the other, if you are stuck.

My total rating anyhow is 70 % - the game length is noticeable for a freeware game.

Rating in detail (Maximum points 7):

• Comedy: 7
• environment authenticity: 2
• dramatic: 1
• graphics and film sequences: 4
• Story: 5
• puzzles and logic: 5