With brilliant voice acting, wonderfully absurd humour, and deeply satisfying puzzles, Heir of the Dog is a delightful point-and-click adventure that

There are plenty of things a respectable Victorian gentleman shouldn't do. Drinking an experimental concoction found in his uncle's laboratory is probably quite high on the list, but Cummerbund Bandersnatch is not a particularly discerning man. One swig later, he's turning into a dog every night, his uncle is nowhere to be found, and the streets of London are suddenly full of people with very strange problems. As beginnings to a point-and-click adventure go, it's difficult to ask for much more.

Heir of the Dog comes from Tall Story Games, the studio behind Lucy Dreaming, and it's a wonderful reminder of just how much life there is in the classic adventure game formula. This is a game of ridiculous conversations, improbable inventory combinations, and the occasional profound realisation that you have been approaching a problem entirely the wrong way. More importantly, it's a game that managed to make me almost bark with laughter.

The setup takes obvious inspiration from Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, although Cummerbund is considerably less intimidating than Stevenson's unfortunate doctor. By day, he's a hapless aristocrat trying to make sense of his uncle's disappearance. By night, he transforms into a dog, equipped with an improbably precise nose. The resulting mystery draws him into an increasingly absurd version of Victorian London: peculiar residents, a fantastic parody of Sweeney Todd’s iconic pie shop, and plenty of Tall Story Games’s hilarious British product spoofs.

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