Tux and Fanny review – a surreal lo-fi treasure of a game

Nintendo Switch, PC; Ghost Time Games
This endearing adventure feels like a fever-dream Flash game you discovered in the 00s and could never find again

Like many great adventures, Tux and Fanny begins on a quiet afternoon. Our two oddly named protagonists decide that they would like to play a game of football, but disaster strikes: the ball is flat. Our quest is simple - find a way to reinflate the football. Can we find a pump? This first challenge is the route towards hundreds of other tiny mysteries in the labyrinthine world of Tux and Fanny's house and surrounding gardens, each stranger and more delightful than the last. There is a tree growing up through the floor. The antenna on the roof is broken. There is a door in the wall where there shouldn't be and strange figures are coming through. All is absolutely not what it seems.

To categorise this as a point-and-click adventure, or an exploration game, or a puzzle game feels wrong, though it incorporates elements of all three genres while subverting them at every turn. The player wanders around as Tux, Fanny, the cat or the flea that lives on the cat's back, and even the rewards for your problem-solving have a dreamlike feel to them. Some puzzles contain whole worlds of their own: an entire readable copy of Moby-Dick is hidden on the shelf, as are many tiny comics and zines that are a joy to browse through. There is a plethora of micro-games, found on floppy disks around the house and garden, which you can play on the desktop computer in the living room. These micro-games have silly names such as Skull Legs and Puzzle Tractor, but they are purposeful and even occasionally poetic in their execution.