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The Ugly Prince Duckling
 The name Hans Christian Andersen is synonymous with fairytales; he even called his biography The Fairy Tale of My Life. The Ugly Prince Duckling is another telling of a snippet of this great storyteller's life... and it's a fairytale of course.
There's dark trouble a-brewing in the land with a sneaky evil-doer behind it all, plus some troublesome trolls, an elusive tinderbox, and a wayward princess who needs help. Can you help our hero avoid the trolls, rescue the princess, find the tinderbox, and bring light back to the land?
The tale begins with Hans' arrival in Copenhagen. As he was in real life when he set out on his adventures, he's a teenager from a poor family background, and it's time to make his mark on the world. Here is where this latest tale spinning begins, and it's delightfully woven with Hans meeting up with numerous characters he will one day create when he begins writing his much loved fairytales.
Thus The Ugly Prince Duckling is inspired by, and borrows from, various Hans Christian Andersen fairytales including The Ugly Duckling, The Tinderbox, The Emperor's New Clothes, The Little Mermaid, and more. If you've read any of the stories then you can have fun picking out familiar objects, situations, and characters. The developers boast more than "60 different real-time rendered characters" and I can believe that!
In this magical world the numerous characters mill about from location to location so there's fun to be had finding them to complete various tasks. Click on any one of them and they'll all have something to say, very likely a useful chore to do or tip to help move the game along, All the dialogue is clear and professionally spoken and the characters are quirky, colourful, and nicely animated.
 They're amusing to watch and the game is visually striking with the graphics so lovingly detailed and eye-catching. The Copenhagen of this story is a place of narrow, twisty, cobblestone streets lined with buildings of many shapes and colours, all delicately and imaginatively drawn. There are some dark tunnels too, and an assortment of indoor locations — the palace, the school, the tailor's shop, etc.
The Ugly Prince Duckling is a third person perspective adventure game offering both mouse (point and click) or keyboard control. The game play involves talking to various characters and doing favours or taking care of chores in return for help. Some challenges simply require finding various objects whilst for others there are contraptions to operate and a little logical thinking may be involved here. There is a bit of troll-dodging to do as well, when walking the streets in the dark, but avoiding capture is very easy and the penalty for failure is mild — the loss of a coin or three. Also there is a treasure hunt to collect the coins to forfeit when captured, and they also come in handy to buy a few useful items, but once again there's no serious penalty for slacking on this task as there are coins for the taking when the time comes.
The Ugly Prince Duckling is promoted as a game for all the family so there is nothing untoward for younger kids. The trolls aren't fierce at all and the black-clad figure with shiny eyes is the usual fairytale bad guy. However considering the fairytale theme, the treasure hunting and the troll dodging, it's a game suited more for kids rather than adults although older Hans Christian Andersen fans might not be able to resist.
It's an amusing little story, cute, magical, and easy to follow and there's lots of help for younger players. As noted earlier the game characters have useful tips and, coupled with this, a diary helpfully lists various tasks, and descriptions of inventory items also contain hints. Most of the challenges are easy to work out with a little careful exploration although younger children might need a helping hand with aligning the planets and setting off on the right foot in the maze.
 I would dearly like to highly recommend this game for children but with reservations because, despite its charm, it isn't without its shortcomings. Here I'm referring to the irritating interface, which would make it frustrating for younger players — and older players for that matter. Unfortunately it can be difficult steering Hans around when using the mouse or the arrow keys. He often requires intricate manoeuvring so it does take some patience, especially when a location is crowded with characters. There are a few tricky screen exits to find too, requiring multiple clicks or key-taps to get Hans moving and the same thing goes for simply carrying out actions. For instance, Hans will sometimes initiate conversations at a mouse click, at other times he'll only pay attention to keyboard instructions... if you're lucky. If not then if at first you don't succeed, click and click again!
What a shame that the interface is so temperamental because The Ugly Prince Duckling has lots going for it. An entertaining children's fairytale, charming graphics, cute characters and some good challenges for the younger ones. It is a game for parents to supervise or to play along with the kids rather than leaving younger players entirely to their own devices.
The Ugly Prince Duckling plays without the CD in the drive so kids don't need to go looking each time the game is loaded up. It's divided into 5 acts and there are lots of options for tinkering with the screen resolution, anti-aliasing, graphics detail and volume. Subtitles are available for all the speech and there are more than enough save game slots.
Hans, it seems, is poised to continue his adventures so hopefully the interface will get some attention to make it more responsive. That taken care of and Hans Christian Andersen's adventures would be something to look forward to.
Copyright © Rosemary Young 2007.
All rights reserved.
System Requirements:
Win 2000/XP/Vista, 1.6 GHz Pentium 4 or AMD Sempron 2800+, 512 MB RAM, 1.4 GB free disk space, 8x or higher CD/DVD ROM drive, DirectX 9.0c (included on disk), 128 MB DirectX 9.0c compatible Video Card, 16-bit DirectX 9.0c compatible Sound Card, Keyboard, Mouse.
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