If you've ever said to yourself, "Self, I love Carmel Games' point-and-click adventures, but why don't they have more singing gold diggers?"... then Luke Deluxe is for you. Luke winds up getting entangled with a woman and her disturbingly clingy son who believe he's rich, and unless he can figure out a way to get rid of them, he's getting hitched tomorrow, because we all know getting tricked into blurting the words "marry me" in a fast food restaurant by a woman who then threatens to murder you gruesomely in front of witnesses if you don't follow through is legally binding. The cursor will change when it passes over something or someone you can interact with, and all you need to do is click on things to play. To say Luke Deluxe is weird is a bit of an understatement, with perhaps an over reliance on certain tropes, and it's also a little gross... don't think too much about that burger. The whole thing is very tongue in cheek, and if you don't mind its sense of humour, or its off-the-wall puzzles, or the fact that it makes you dial a rotary phone, there's something very early 1990s Saturday morning cartoon about the whole thing. It's goofy and campy and wacky and a whole bunch of other adjectives that mean it doesn't take itself seriously, and with a passel of oddball puzzles to solve, makes for a cheekily cartoonish adventure that fits inside a lunch break.
The thing I had to view the walkthrough for:
You can go through the trash once you've given the cleaning guy something to eat
The rest is MOSTLY straight-forward, once you figure out where to click.
The phone gets no answer until the situation is a little more... obvious.
I thought the puzzles were alright, though do often require an... odd line of thinking. The whole "isn't marriage a death sentence, fellas?" spiel is kinda tired, and I wasn't a fan of the
"haha, they got dragged off to the nut house" ending.
So... overall, I guess not really a big fan of this one. Usually I can get on board with Carmel Games wacky sense of humour, but this ticked some wrong boxes for me.
I agree with the other two commenters; this game is a stinker. A couple of the puzzles were just plain out head-scratchers. And the theme/ story wasn't cute, funny or entertaining.
Considering the amount of, or lack of I should say, original thought goes into the artwork and voice acting I would expect a little bit more out of the story and puzzles.
Skip this one, but Carmel will be back I am sure.
Reading the review I remembered having played a game with this plot long ago, so I did some googling. It appears this is a remake of the first game released by Carmel Games (formerly OK Interactive?) entitled simply "Luke", released in 2012.
Yeah, I have to agree that this one is pretty lame, as well as gross.
About the telephone, I didn't mind dialing it once, but I think I dialed it five times.
Carefully read the card with the phone number. Don't bother dialing it until
the situation is doubly obvious,
when they both look like they are possessed.
I almost missed one location.
The bar is in the hotel, behind the receptionist.
I did think the one sign was pretty funny:
"In case of fire, exit hotel before tweeting."
walkthrough anyone?
guess not.
Update