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The Madness of Hamlet Comes to iOS, Mac

To play or not to play? When it comes to Alawar Entertainment’s new game Hamlet, that really is the question. Hamlet (short for Hamlet or the Last Game without MMORPG Elements, Shaders and Product Placement) was first released for the PC in April of last year, and made its debut on Mac and iOS devices today.

I may be the only English major in the United States to complete two semesters of Shakespeare without ever having read Hamlet, but if I was counting on this game to fill me in on the finer points of the play, alas! I was sadly mistaken. Apart from sharing the same name, this version of Hamlet has almost nothing in common with William Shakespeare’s original tragedy. Our hero is not Hamlet himself, but a time-traveling scientist who accidentally lands his spaceship on top of the beleaguered prince. In order to save the future as we know it, the hero must avenge Hamlet’s parents’ deaths and rescue Ophelia from the evil Claudius and his old man Polonius.

What it may lack in plot development, Hamlet amply makes up for in challenge. With 25 levels, no item inventory, and plenty of boss battles, you must “by indirections find directions out.” In other words, you’ll have to rely on logic to solve the puzzle in each stage by finding and tapping on objects in the right sequence. If you get stuck, you can tap on the hero himself to find out what he is thinking, and after several minutes, you can also tap on the question mark that appears in the lower right corner of your screen for an additional (if often hopelessly obtuse) hint.

My frustration with the game’s intermittently sluggish point-and-tap interface was rivaled only by the surge of exhilaration I felt each time I beat a puzzle and moved on to the next level. I was also impressed with Hamlet’s animation style, charming for all its quirk, and the game’s soothing background music kept me from hurling my phone at the wall mid-puzzle on more than one occasion.

And now, we must return to our original question: to play or not to play? The answer is clear. If you’re looking for a unique game that will truly bend your brain, get thee to the App Store and check out the lite version of Hamlet for an hour of free gameplay. When you’re ready to find the full-on method to this madness, you’ll find it for $2.99 on the iPhone and $3.99 for iPad users.