All you pathetic humans have the concept of reincarnation wrong, as you will discover playing Chris Gianelloni's point-and-click adventure, Reincarnation: A Demon's Day Out. You see, reincarnation isn't karmic. You don't come back as a banana slug if you were bad, and you aren't going to get to be a Hollywood heart-throb if you were good. No, reincarnation is a loophole that Hell has to put up with in the ultimate battle for souls. God decided to give the dam… er… darned a way out of Hell and redeem themselves, thus finding their way up to Heaven. Lucifer, in order to overcome this, has to send out his demons to re-kill "reincarnies" before this happens.

This is, of course, EVIL…

As a demon, you use your point-and-click skills to manipulate the objects around you, solving puzzles as you go. Your demonic powers include levitation and the operation of simple machinery while your creativity allows you to get to no limit of utter mischief.

This is, of course, EVIIIIL…

Gain entry to the reincarny's house, find his sin, and then come up with a way for him to return from whence he came… That's to say, Hell.

This is, of course, EEEEEVIIIILLL…

Well, maybe not finding his sin, that's probably justice, but let's never mind that. Remember… EEEEEVVVIIIILLLLL!

Analysis: This style of point-and-click adventure is really beginning to come into its own, evolving much from the plainer Hapland-style games. With the Reemus series, The Visitor , and now the Reincarnation series, the type of point-and-click adventure where you act as an invisible hand that modestly affects the environment on behalf of the character has come to develop loads of character, depth, and charm.

With Reincarnation we see healthy doses of humor blended generously with a sort of light-hearted taste of the macabre. Nicely drawn in cartoony drawings, gorgeously animated, and fairly well written, Reincarnation is easy to look at and easy to get into. This is helped along by the surprisingly good voice acting which really throws its weight into the project. Lucifer has a notably posh accent, while the demon you play as has an accent I can only characterize as standard evil.

And did I mention he was EVIL? If I haven't, don't worry. In an endearing way, our little purple imp takes no end of pride in expressing how EVIL he is.

The puzzles hit a sweet spot between easiness and creativity. A deductive eye should be able to suss out what needs to be done in each room without taxing the gray cells too terribly much, but the difficulty level isn't dumbed down so much that you don't appreciate the level of intricacies of all of your EVIL-doing.

There are a few downsides that should be mentioned. For one, while the voice acting is well done, the recording of the voice acting could have used a quick polish or two and you can hear some of the hisses and static that accompany amateur recordings. Meanwhile, while the puzzles themselves are decent, there are a few moments where you are forced into pixel hunting, which is always maddening.

Aside from that, Reincarnation: ADDO is a nice little EVIL point and clicker with a dark sense of humor and puzzles that should neither place a heavy burden on your brain nor your time.

Play Reincarnation: A Demon's Day Out

[Hungry for more EVIL? The second chapter in the Reincarnation series is out.]

Play Reincarnation: Riley's Out Again