The Beard in the Mirror

Very enjoyable. Funny and well written. Loved the graphics. Never too hard or ridiculous on the puzzles.

Great game. Loved the pixel art. Storyline was original. Puzzles were a good difficulty. Recommend anyone to play.

What a fantastic game. Would love a sequel. Cheers to the devs

What a charming tale to play! Clearly inspired by the games from the old days, this little gem is a fun and well-designed PnC game filled with adventure, romance and magic.
It is definitely a must play for any PnC games afficionados!

This really scratched the itch for a well written, classic Sierra / LucasArts style adventure game. Funny, cute, and fun little fairy tale adventure in the tone of Princess Bride or Stardust that never felt bloated for the sake of making it longer.

I played through the entire game on a Steam Deck, and it worked beautifully that way.

A hapless young adventure-player gets sucked into a world of fairy tale intrigue and romance along with his trusty pink crowbar and three vegetarian gumballs. You know, it's really goofy -- purposefully so most of the time -- but it's really earnest and sweet, and has enough self-knowledge to capitalize on its own naivete without being too self-aware. Oh, that self-awareness! It'll reach right up and poke you in the a$$ when you least expect it! Fun fact: the scariest character in the game is none other than Artie, the rock-collecting forest guardian. That guy will literally kill you over a colorful mineral.

Puzzles are solid, not too difficult, but occasionally spike into head-scratcher territory. You won't tear your hair out, I think.

I want to brag on the game's storytelling a little. Despite the fact that this is a relatively simple fantasy world (the time travel element does mix things up in the second act), and even though the game is only about three hours long, it does an excellent job at building a believably strong relationship between Lily and Paul -- you can totally see why they care about each other so much. It doesn't matter that Paul is only about 1.5 degrees removed from Guybrush Threepwood.

(I originally got a little ticked because I couldn't blow the game up to fullscreen, and I was ready to drop it out of hand -- but then, I'd been going around humming Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" all day long in anticipation of playing it, and on top of that, I remembered that I've played through things a lot clunkier and glitchier than this, so I gave it whirl . . . and it was a very pleasant experience! I actually had a lot more fun with Beard in the Mirror than that overrated sepia turd Grim Fandango, I kid you not.)

brilliant old school point and click witty and the puzzles are not too easy if you like point and click you will love this

I would give a sideways review if they were available, as this seems like a true labor of love, a tribute to a lost age of gaming and not a terrible experience. OTOH, I couldn't get myself to finish it. The story was pretty trite and the graphics were jarring (a really bad color palate). I smiled a few times but in the end I just didn't think it was very good.

It was competent though, and I would say to the devs not to give up if they are still making games.

I decided to upvote this game after finishing it - it has a decent (but not very engaging) story with some charming moments, mostly good puzzles and great music.

The Beard in the Mirror is a fantasy adventure game made by 2 people over a long time: it's a work of love but it's a work that was done on limited resources: the artwork could use some additional detail and shading, many things were not animated and many of the scenes were largely empty.

The story is a good take on "stranger in a strange land" but there were several points where the solution to puzzles were not very believable. The conversations were all right but there wasn't much depth to the world. There are some funny one-liners.

All in all, a good old-school point-and-click adventure, I'm glad I played it but there's not much replay value. Recommended to any fan of the genre.

Note: like others mentioned, I ran into issues with the game resolution. Keep in mind, that this is an old AGS adventure so it's display support is not as up-to-date as the current version of AGS. Windowed mode with 4x scaling worked for me; none of the full-screen ones did. If you have issues during start-up, run the winsetup utility that sits in the game folder to configure resolution.

Point & Click adventures are my favorite genre of computer game. I am a fan with equal appreciation for Sierra and LucasArts titles. The Beard in the Mirror has a Sierra type interface with the humor of a LucasArts adventure. The graphics and animation are high quality, although the game fades to black whenever a sophisticated animation would have been required and ends up wrecking the immersion. There are ways to die, but the rather than forcing you restore a previous save, the game allows you to rewind and make alternate choices. There are a couple of timed and arcade sequences. Be careful and save often because I ran in to a situation where the rewind feature restored the game state with only a few seconds left on the timer and made it almost impossible to progress without extreme precision. I was able to perform the correct maneuver after multiple attempts, but it would have been less stressful if I had a save game that left me with more time on the clock.

The writing for the game was edited well. I did not find any typos or translation errors that are typical of indie releases. The music was adequate -- it doesn't have a soundtrack that I would listen to outside of the game itself. I did not earn the maximum amount of points in my initial playthrough, and I have not yet decided if I want to try again and earn them all. I don't believe that the missing points will have much of an impact on the narrative or experience.

Should you play this game? If you are a fan of point & click adventures, then yes.

Developers: Please use a version of the AGS engine that allows for borderless fullscreen gameplay on future titles.

Great quest with very interesting storyline, very good puzzles and great atmosphere. 100% recommendation for lovers of good old games.

I only tried this because it was marked down super low in one of Steam's big sales and I'm always desperate for new Point-and-Click adventure games but I'm glad I did. I don't mind the old fashioned 16-bit pixelated graphics. The graphics just felt nostalgic and normal for a P&C adventure game to me. They really went all out with making it feel retro as they offer a modern take on the old fashioned "hint-line" but instead you can send them a message. That played both against and in favor of this game for me. On the one hand I'm not an 8 year old kid with all summer to figure out a puzzle anymore... so if I get stuck I'd like to be able to look for a quick hint or walkthrough so I can keep going without having to send a message and wait for response. On the other hand being stuck with something (can't remember what now) led me to the one semi-walkthrough video which was a livestream on YouTube where he reads the text out loud for you and gives the characters voices... his voices were almost more fun than playing the game myself. So yeah, be aware there isn't really a walkthrough if you get stuck but if you have the time to try different combinations and click through various items on the screen you should be able to get there eventually without one. Most of the puzzles are pretty easy, the game largely leads you from one thing to another.

There is a lot of humor in the game and in Sierra-esque style it has some humorous deaths but I gotta be honest it's more cheesy humor. The whole game feels like King's Quests cheesy 3rd cousin, the dialogue especially gets quite cheesy. However the overall story isn't bad. It's a guy out of his element, there's some time travel, there's magic, sword fights, romance... for a fairly short game it actually packs quite a lot in and considering the budget they made it with it's pretty good all around but you might find yourself cringing at some of the more cheesy awkward parts.

If you already like retro P&C Adventure games give this one a shot you'll probably enjoy it. If you're new to the Genre maybe stick with a classic like the King's Quest or Monkey Island series as your introduction.

I liked that you could fast travel by pressing ESC. All P&C should have a fast travel option.

Good humor and dialogue.

Graphics are typical pixel art. Color scheme is nice and calming.

The time-travelling aspect of the story went completely over my head...too confusing. Just seems like a nightmare time loop, imo...

The game is short (and I take forever to finish games). But I also finished this quickly because I really enjoyed playing this.

A light, funny, short P&C.

A true nostalgia trip for early 90's pixely point&click adventure game fans. An ordinary, somewhat shy guy gets whisked away to a fantasy land and tasked with a quest that he neither understands much of or feels up to - but nevertheless sets out on this unexpected journey of discovery and growth. Along the way he'll make friends and enemies. He'll meet some crazies and non-human forms of inteligent life. As you'd expect from a fantasy tale, there's swords, magical creatures - and love. But all of that has its own unique flavor, specific to the creators -- a wife and a husband -- and the flerd between Paul and Lily feels all the more personal and adorkable for that. The game itself leans to the comedic side, and the puzzles especially require some unorthodox, out-of-the-box thinking -- but while the solutions might not be evident at once, they're fair and require only that you mind your surroundings and inventory. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and while I've never played King's Quest or Simon the Sorcerer (which, I think, might've been major inspirations), as a LucasArts adventure fan I some of my favorite things out of it, too.

Pros:
- the old-school graphics! Today's mainstream where games seem to revel in being hi-res festivals of murkiness -- and I love me some pixels and saturated, juicy colors
- the comedy - I've always preferred the funny point&clicks with odd-ball characters, and this one has plenty
- the heart - the game's a passion project that was made on and off for 10 years! You have to admire this kind of devotion!

Cons:
- there's one Click Time Event that I found annoying (but the creators say there's an option to skip it if you've failed twice)
- one puzzle leads to a dead end after much effort taken, which seems a bit unfair (but the actual solution isn't far away, actually)

Had a lot of fun playing this -- took around 4 hours (Steam isn't showing the playtime correctly for some reason). Thanks for the adventure!

Amazing story, setting, characters, puzzles...everything. This game was a blast to play. The puzzles weren't overly difficult, but they weren't too easy either. The story and characters are engaging and hilarious. I loved every second of it.

This was a nice retro-graphic point-and-click adventure. It took me about 4 hours to play through, which I consider to be a good length for the $10 price. The story starts off a bit confusing, however it does make sense as you play through. An interesting take on an "amnesic character" in a strange land.

The puzzles were not overly simple but never lead to my being so confused that I couldn't finish. After completing the story I felt satisfied, and its got a nice lead up for a sequel which I'd be glad to buy if they make it.

If you're a fan of old-school adventures with a fantasy setting I'd definately recommend it.

I LIKE this Kinda strange "guy out of his element game" that plays and feels very old skool...some decent humor so far -hoping for more comedy ... I am not very far yet but Ill stick with it for a bit and update my review-

I am still having issues with FULLSCREEN--
I get an error when trying to go to full screen mode REGARDLESS of my selections in the AGS tool... I even installed AGS and no... the best I can do is get it to run at 1280 x 800 in a window- unchecking the window box simply causes an error message to display-

https://s17.postimg.org/ke6abf9i7/issues.png

https://s17.postimg.org/7y9khog67/ags.png