Mutiny of the Things for sure made me curious of what's inside, as it hardly provides any hint of what it will be. Things can, by definition, not be alive or even stage a mutiny. The intro, styled as a newspaper interview, tells me of our hero (Jack Flash) who plans to use his so-called Succ-O-Matic to literally suck the life out of these animated things again.
Though let's start from the beginning. A certain Prof. Dr. Eng. E. Eddison – also going by Evil Eddie – a mad scientist, has put life into everyday utilities when experimenting with energy generators: shoes, false teeth, pressing iron, pencils, snowmen, but also pumpkins, carrots, sunflowers and much more. All these things now want to found their independent city in the middle of this beautiful country. On a government mission, it is now Jack Flash's task to contain this out of control horde and destroy the energy generator in each level, which they need to survive. If everything else fails, he can also dissolve aggressive things into a cloud of ones. You may ask, why do they dissolve into ones? I assume this is an allusion to the digital origin of the objects, a kind of rematerialisation into zeros and ones. They went for a child-like motif. So there could be no blood or explosions. Which is why we get ones. In general, the graphical presentation is rather playful, almost cute and should appeal to kids. A couple of simple music tracks accompanying the entertaining jumping and running do the rest. However, each track is fairly short and therefore the melody will dig its way even into ears trained by screaming children until you won't be able to get rid of it anymore. Unfortunately, there is no way to individually control music and sound effects so that you will finally have no other option than to disable sound completely.
“You all meet in a tavern…” is an opening as old as role-playing games themselves. Even after decades of evolution in playing styles, settings and even formats, Ye Good Olde Inn still is the number one meeting place and quest hub. If you think about it more closely it actually makes sense: Lots of different folks coming together, being in a talkative mood either because they are naturally chatty or because they have been quaffing just one ale too much. An ideal atmosphere for sharing information and lending a helping hand. Where else can you speak so openly about all of your troubles to total strangers? Where else are you going to make hasty promises based on alcohol fuelled solidarity and overconfidence? Some might say it is a rather cheap hook, some might wish for a more personal character motivation and some might want to draw more attention to their elaborate backgrounds. Others might just create an excellent game about it, a game like Tavern Crawler.
Something's not working right in Discworld. The repercussions can be seen all over. People are still dying as normal, but their souls aren't being taken away. So the dead continue to roam the streets. The mages guild decides to have Rincewind investigate the wereabouts of Death. After taking a couple of twists and turns, the plot has Death turning into a movie star and Rincewind temporarily taking over the reaper role.
To those who were mourning the death of the Adventure genre as they knew it in the middle of the 1990s, when Myst style games were taking over the market and purely plot-driven "games" hadn't yet found their niche, Discworld II was a revelation. Here was a game which had something akin to a plot, real characters and dialogue while offering puzzles which did not come straight out of a brainteaser book, detached from the world, but which originated from this world and the needs of moving the plot forward.