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Another review of a Point and Click title by Sierra Entertainment (who were one of the juggernauts of PaC titles at the time), this was one of their more educational titles.  This was another game I had gotten my hands on when I was much younger, this one being on the floppy disks as opposed to a CD.

Though I will say, in many ways this game is still on par with Sierra's usual humorously odd PaC games.  There's absolutely no voice for the most part outside of the protagonist's dog making sounds on occasion, and that's actually perfectly fine.  The game plays well, looks good, and sounds pretty decent overall.

Story
Pepper is young girl living a normal life with her parents, and her troublesome dog Lockjaw.  She's a bit of a tomboy, and enjoys the shenanigans her dog gets into, such as burying his harness right below her neighbor's flowers.  As she's enjoying the sunshine with her dog outside, there's an explosion in the attic.  Her parents from inside complain about her uncle (on her mother's side) whom the dad ouright claims is evil.  Pepper and Lockjaw decide to climb the house and investigate, making their way to just outside the attic.  There they see Pepper's evil Uncle working on some sort of time-machine, where he decides to change the outcome of the Revolutionary War by sprinkling a bit of the 1960's hippie vibe into Ben Franklin's personality.  However, Pepper accidentally barges in, and falls into the machine, finding herself transported to 1764, where Ben Franklin's altered laid-back and lazy attitude has spread out to the entire populace outside of the conquering British whom have set up residence and have all but taken over leadership in this sudden turn of events.  It's up to Pepper and Lockjaw to find a way to snap Ben Franklin out of his new-age state of mind and restore history to the way it was.

Now, in all honesty this is where the game shines.  The story is quite honestly amusing, seeing 1764 people with 1960s attitudes.  There's a lot of tie-dye, beads, peace-not-war attitude, and a laissez faire outlook for practically all the people except for our protagonist, the antagonists, and another character you meet during your adventure.

The game itself is broken into acts, with two subtitles to give an idea of the main focus each time.



Overall, I think story was the game's best feature, since it was so odd/unusual and yet still flowed pretty well throughout.

Gameplay
Like your normal point and click game at the time, this one wasn't entirely different.  You had a menu to choose to walk, talk, touch, look, or view your inventory.  You would point and click your mouse to where you wanted to do such action, like normal.



Being that it's an educational game, Sierra decided to add another button known as the "truth" button.  During any scenario, at basically any time (even during non-character portrait dialogue), you could point and click the truth button anywhere and click.  If it was something considered historically true, it would say as such and give a small description.  Likewise, if it was something that was fabricated on for entertainment purposes, it would say "FALSE" and explain what about it was false.  Even some things that players might consider to be historically accurate or accurate to the person may actually be considered false with an explanation as to why.

At the end of each Act, you're also given a short quiz as to what you've learned, some questions revolving around what you learned in the story itself, some revolving around just what you learned from talking to people, looking around, and using your truth button.  To be honest, I get where they were going for with this, but I don't really think it was something that was begging to be included, and could have easily not been in the game without breaking it.



Also, since it's an educational game, there's really no way to die.  However, that doesn't mean the game is automatically winnable either.  Rather than dying, wrong actions (normally being caught) will trigger an ending cutscene showing the white house with the American flag background, with the flag altering to the UK flag to symbolize the outcome reversing and the British dominating the US in the war.  There's surprisingly a decent number of ways to trigger this, but they're normally pretty easy to avoid.



Outside of that, it's like every other PaC game out there, though this game is far more of a collectathon of items than anything else.  I actually don't recall any puzzles as opposed to just finding and using the right items.  But unlike other PaC games, there's absolutely no way to progress without the right items.  But at the same time, I also can't recall a moment to where I suddenly lost the game for that reason.  If anything, the game just literally will sit in limbo until you find the items you need.

Actually, I take it back.  There's 1, count it 1 item that you have to get earlier in the last act, and will set you up to automatically lose if you don't have it by the end.  But as far as I recall, that was the only instance that the game pulled that stunt.

So yeah, it's a little easier...but overall the gameplay aspect is decent.

Graphics and Audio
Much like KQVI, Pepper's Adventures in Time was released in 1993.  Graphically, they're very similar.  In certain ways, King's Quest VI looks better, but in other ways, PAiT looks better.  KQVI goes for more realistic looking models for the character portraits and uses voice acting and looks fantastic.  However, PAiT uses much more cartoon-ish looking portraits for realistic figures and even has a little closer perspective, and still looks fantastic.


http://www.abandonia.com/files/games/4633/Peppers%20Adventures%20in%20Time_8.png

Audio wise, it definitely is a MIDI arrangement and it can be heard very quickly.  However, that's not to say it's bad either.  While a little less refined and not on the same level as games like KQ, it still sounds pretty well done for the most part.  Ben Franklin's hot-tub area has a wonderfully "groovy" type of music playing that I enjoyed, the British were given an interesting although enjoyable song, the overall sounds of the game were pretty good...and I still enjoy the voice-less "Ima is my Name" song (Skip to 5:27).  Some of the characters were given..odd songs when you talked to them, but for the most part they were good.

Replayability
Now, this is where the game suffers.  Unlike a usual PaC game to where they can be multiple ways to win, in this game there's one direct path.  The only reason you'd replay after beating this is to attempt to answer all of the quiz questions right, but in reality there's really no payoff I can recall for doing that either.  Once you've made it through the game, there's really no reason to go back.

Overall
Overall it's not on the same level as most of Sierra's or even Lucasarts' most well known PaC games, but overall it's enjoyable.  From an educational standpoint, it's interesting to see them try to teach history by combining the personality of a later era with that of and older one in the way that they did.  It's fun, amusing at points, and despite some more cringy areas such as the end-of-act-quizzes, it's overall a well done game.

I think the truth button and quizzes are interesting, given that it's an education game. History isn't considered very important in American education, and a lot of the "history" you see in entertainment is based on artistic license and didn't really happen the way it's portrayed. The concept of setting fact and fiction apart within a game and quizzing the players on those is a neat idea, and I'm sorry it didn't apparently take off since this is the first I've heard of it.

Also, interestingly enough, part of Day of the Tentacle takes place in 1780s Philadelphia, where the player also gets to meet and interact with Ben Franklin and others. Seems PaC development teams had a fixation with this place and general time. And since we're talking about history, there are periods where Benjamin Franklin was attacked as laid-back and lazy, particularly by John Adams when they were serving together as peace commissioners in Paris in the 1770s, so the premise of the game isn't entirely unfounded, just really exaggerated.

I remember that, it was like one of the very first areas you visit in DotT.  I loved the twin brothers in that game.