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Gast: The Greatest Little Ghost
 There is a lot to like about this game. It looks like something Tim (The Nightmare Before Christmas) Burton would make, and it is a many layered and well put together offering. However it felt like it was in need of a definite demographic, as it is ultimately a product not quite here or there. It's perhaps too childlike for many adults, too simple for many older children, and probably too dark and mechanically difficult for the younger ones. Which doesn't mean that my daughters and I didn't have some fun, just that a more focussed target audience would have produced a better game.
Whilst the aim of the game is to defeat the clown, the aim within the game is to collect stars. Without stars Beleseblob will reign supreme, and the more stars you have the better. Some you might be lucky enough to find lying around, but most you will obtain by completing tasks given to you by the many denizens of the park. The fairy needs new wings, the spider wants a snack, the dungeon master wants to glue his head back on. Accomplish these things and a star is yours.
Collect three stars and you can ride the roller coaster, at the end of which you will find the clown. However objects and the park characters will try and knock you off, and each direct hit will use up a star, so you will need some extra to take the ride. Then you will need some more to get past the henchmen guarding the clown, and finally you defeat the clown by throwing stars at him. So whilst you can ride with three, you can't win without quite a few more.
But it's more involved than that. The characters that will try and thwart your attempts to reach the clown are the same ones that you meet in the game proper, and you can increase your chances of success at the endgame by taking them out of the game as you go. This you can achieve in a variety of ways.
Sometimes it's as simple as completing the task you are given - we found the fairy some new wings and she flew away. With others, you have to be more deliberate. Many of them will follow you, and you can lead them to some rather gruesome ends. The snack we found for the spider was one of the other characters. Some happier ends exist as well - one character became the missing soul of another and both exited the park, leaving two stars behind as well.
So satisfying or eliminating the characters gains you both stars and removes them from the endgame. Plus it can be fun in its own right, particularly some of the interactions between the characters.
 According to the manual, you can't complete all of the tasks in the same game, and this is clearly a product of the way in which you deal with the characters and use your inventory items. You will find and receive a variety of items as you make your way around the park; worms, garlic and feathers, just to name a few. Most you can only use once, and the choices you make will impact on what you can and can't do elsewhere. Two characters wanted a gem, but we only ever found one, so one had to go without. A branch would have been useful to reach a star, but we had used it elsewhere. One character was looking for his cat, but unbeknown to him we had lured the cat to a beheading sometime earlier.
You can, though, complete many tasks in a variety of ways, so you will rarely be stuck. Just hatch a Plan B or C. And the fact that so many things can interact in so many ways means the game moves along fairly nicely, and stars continue to be accumulated.
The park is nicely laid out, twisting and turning paths through bat-infested forests making finding your way around a bit trickier as well as adding to the fear factor. A gentle spooky atmosphere is created, aided and abetted by the music and the use of cut-scenes. Gast can be frightened, and an icon of his (or her) face in the top right corner will keep track of how scary things have been. Falling rocks, lurking monsters, and sneaky traps can all give Gast a fright.
You can reduce the scare quotient by collecting stars, as well as by drinking raindrops and in a number of other ways. How scared Gast is determines how long you have to ride the roller coaster.
A haunted house adds a dimension all of its own. It's like a world within a world, and we finished the game without unlocking even one of the many locked doors inside. Clare is determined to go back and see what is behind all those doors.
The openness of the game should be apparent. You can go just about anywhere at any stage of the game, complete the tasks in any order you like, and ride the roller-coaster after as few as three stars have been collected. It is unlikely you will be stuck looking for a particular item, as so many tasks can be completed in a variety of ways. Replayability is definitely enhanced by the way the game is put together.
Gast does have to be close to an item or object to interact with it, but an active item will be indicated by a sparkle. Thought bubbles appear to indicate which item might be used where, so puzzling isn't really a big factor. You steer Gast around with the mouse, new screens appearing as you leave each one. Gast does tend, though, to do an annoying pirouette as he leaves a screen, which can be frustrating, and the orientation in each new screen can sometimes be confusing.
The falling rocks, and the roller coaster ride and endgame, are gently arcade-like in nature, but other than that Gast is essentially a hunt and gather spook fest. Like most children's games it's fairly short, but does offer replay potential. It's probably a game best suited for 10 year olds (or thereabouts), and those of us with a 10 year old inside.
Copyright © Steve Ramsey under the strict supervision of Clare 2002.
All rights reserved.
System Requirements:
Windows 95/98/2000/XP. Pentium II 266 or better, 64 MB RAM, 8x CD ROM, 600 x 800 resolution, 16 bit colour, DirectX compatible Sound Card, DirectX Compatible Graphic Card with at least 4Mb memory. 315 MB free hard disk space, Mouse. Direct 8.0 included on CD.
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