! (9.7Mb)
This is one of those strangely named games that simply don’t show up in search engines. ! (exclamation mark) is the name of the robot, one of the chief characters in this game. The game’s author is Ben Chandler and the themes within this point-and-click adventure are a mixture of comedy and Sci-Fi. Ben is just 23 and lives in the Western Australian Outback (which partly explains the quirky nature of some of his games?!). Expect great things from Ben for the future!
Perhaps we’ll all have robots someday to do our work for us! Anyway in the meantime, something fishy has happened to the town’s one and only monument. It is suspected that Count ‘Can’t’ has something or a great deal to do with this! Worse, one can only imagine the evil intent and purposes he intends to put the monument to. This can’t be allowed to happen or continue, so the Mayor has sent in ! the robot to solve the case.
While ! is already assigned, you need to lend a good hand with your heart and mind (especially the latter!) to defeat the evil Count and get the town’s favourite monument back into its pride of place in the town. Worse, as long as the monument is missing, the good townsfolk know and continue to have visible (or is that invisible?) evidence that the evil Count is threatening their very existence.
The graphics are quite simplistic but adequate and the music is a vox file. You can change various settings with the win setup dialogue menu (in the game folder), including running windowed or full screen. The 4x graphics filter works for me on a normal monitor at 1280x960 resolution, but you may need to experiment to see what works for you or run it at 640x480 windowed.
The ‘Esc’ key skips the Intro or you can use the ‘R’ arrow key or mouse button to fast forward the dialogue. Interestingly the game takes place on the Intro screen. Just move the mouse and use the left mouse button to interact. Choose your responses to questions or to converse underneath the graphics area. That said it’s a good game once you can get past the initial puzzles!
It runs in XP, Vista and Win 7 from the extracted folder. It’s shortish but quite challenging to play.
! to the rescue! Go get the bad guy!
Download HERE
Walkthrough (Major Spoiler) HERE
