Stay, Fyn; stay Zealand; nor sweet Will be wroth. Not yet has a developer assayed the ludic evocation of Hamlet; certainly nothing men of sensibility could name such can be found in this small app.
With the Bard's tragic portrait of the Dane, this game has nary a whit in common. Or rather, the simile is bare, and merely this: the villain is Claudius named, and the "princess" the hero is charged to rescue, Ophelia.
A bit of hugger-mugger has it that you, a creature from some distant time, arriving from the celestial spheres, somehow must take the place of Prince Hamlet, and certify that "history is not changed." This charge is strange, beseems; for those who triumph in the game of Hamlet slay Cladius (with some contraption of gears and lever-arms), and, so live thereafter happily in the arms of sweet Ophelia. "History," if it be such -- for Hamlet is based loosely on Saxo's legend of Amleth, an historical prince of Denmark, but from a legendary era wherein all reportage is of dubious provenance -- has it that Ophelia drowns herself, and Hamlet is slain. Whereby we may instead assume that the "alien" traveller has vastly diverted the stream of time from its wonted path.
If Hamlet, the game, has not a flea to do with Hamlet, the play, then what mought it be? It is an adventure game, of the graphical specie, implemented in yon Wintermute engine, posing a set of point-and-click conundrums lacking in recourse to inventory, some of them notably obscure. Whereat, the existence of a walkthrough provides contestants with some succour. It is entertaining, in modest wise; charming in spots; and withal, a light but not contemptible entertainment. Indeed, 'twere better shorn of its attachment to the Dane.
