If you haven't yet played either entry in the Reincarnation series of adventure games by Flash developer Chris Gianelloni, Halloween is the perfect occasion to check them out. There's no better time of year for a demonic minion to drag some souls back to Hell.
In Reincarnation: A Demon's Day Out (the first game), you play as a mischievous little demon with a special mission. He's been ordered to return to the land of the living and reclaim souls that have been reincarnated in the living realm after having escaped from Hell. The small purple protagonist has a devious sense of humor, and the puzzles he'll need to solve often have darkly humorous outcomes.
The sequel, Reincarnation: Riley's Out Again, continues the adventures of the impish terror as he travels to the land of the living once again to capture Riley, a pesky soul who has quite a knack for escaping Hades.
The gameplay mechanics are typical of other point-and-click adventures, but the writing, art, animation and humor are of atypically high quality for free titles. Riley's Out Again plays very similarly to its predecessor, but also introduces some new gameplay in the form of a stealth sequence that plays like a quick-time-event. Both games also contain challenges that depend on clicking specific areas of the screen at certain times, or in the proper sequence, to complete them.
The musical accompaniment by Brian Holmes fits the games perfectly, and the major characters are all fully voiced. The puzzles don't always have logical solutions, but they're usually quite entertaining. Some solutions are reminiscent of the elaborate death sequences in the Final Destination movies, though none of them reach the Rube Goldberg levels of intricacy, or high levels of violence present in those films.
All in all, the Reincarnation series is a lot of fun, and very appropriate to the spirit of Halloween mischief and tricks. Just remember, if a little purple demon knocks on your door this Halloween, he might be interested in more than your candy.
Jeff Mattas is a staff writer for Ponged.com, a flash game site with hundreds of titles. Ponged is home to
Reincarnation: A Demon's Day Out, its sequel
Reincarnation: Riley's Out Again and many, many other free flash games.
