I’m currently enjoying a vacation and that’s usually a time to do some handheld gaming. When I packed my Evercade I chose four carts to reacquaint myself with, but I’ve only played them for about half an hour.

I also took my Switch 2 along mainly to play some Mario Kart World with my son, but also with the intent of starting with Zelda: Link’s Awakening.

While we did play a little Mario Kart, I haven’t touched Zelda yet. The reason being that I noticed my Nintendo 3DS when I was packing. I realized that I hadn’t touched it in a long time. When I looked at the games I have for the system I noticed one I didn’t even know I had: Runaway: A Twist of Fate.

This is the perfect game for this lazy vacation. It’s more fun than I thought it would be, because spoilers:

It starts out with Gina trying to break Brian free from his coffin because he’s buried alive. In order for her to do so she must enlist the help of a brusque woman by helping her assemble coffins from IKEA. The manual is in Swedish, so only a Swedish ghost can read it through a helpful scholar who talks to the spirits of the deceased. Gina fools the scholar by messing with her equipment and the scholar tricks her by hiding her incompetence by simply using the internet to translate the manual. Also Gina must combine items to extend a circle saw to make a fat angel swing sidewards to pull the bricks from the crypt. Stuff like that. All the while making humorous remarks.

These puzzles were not too hard and make some kind of sense but were not so simple that I got them all in one go.

Playing the game on the 3DS is probably not the easiest way to play it. Using the tiny stylus is often awkward and by using it you cover the text with your hand. The game is also a bit slow in the animations and while you can speed movement up by double tapping, that works only once every three times you try it.

The sound is limited to the limitations of the system and doesn’t sound too well. But the art style more than makes up for it. Along with the fun puzzles and humor those  shortcomings are easily overlooked.

I had to look up when I picked this game up and only then did I notice that I’d apparently also bought the second Runaway game at the same time! I hadn’t seen it on the shelf without my reading glasses.

I have the first game for Windows, but I’ve never played it, because it never really appealed to me.

Bit of a weird order to start with the last game in the series, but if Internet is to be believed I inadvertently made the right choice, because the second game is not reviewed as well as the third. Needing reading glasses more often now can sometimes turn out for the better I guess.

I’m now stuck in the part where Brian needs to break out of the asylum. I’ve spoken to a number of people and picked up quite a few items, but I’m not sure how to proceed. I guess I can try to fold myself up into an invisible box I got from a fellow patient so I can prove I’m mentally ill. But that will only prevent them from transferring me to a regular prison instead of me breaking out. This will need some more tries.