Tulula: Legend of a Volcano (FROG/Pop-up aka "Bubble")
Options include Sound, Music and "All Volume", plus a full-screen option and "Fewer dialogs".
The game starts out with humor, "Enter Your Glorious Name," and "My eyes are old and feeble, describe yourself," at which point you have one of four characters to choose from, two female, two male.
The game is rife with vivid colors - the brightest blues, pinks and oranges are prevalent anywhere you should look. Music is fine, nothing I had to turn off.
At first glance this is a game for children. Bright colors, simple tasks and a lot of feedback (trophies AND achievement flags) easily accounts for the perception. There is a lot of praise about how smart you are.
My first clue that all might not be as it seems when I saw the comment (paraphrasing), "That peacock hasn't eaten in ages! He looks like an unhappy supermodel!"
My second hint was that there was a (SKIPPABLE) tutorial for using the journal. It really does have more options in it than I've seen in a game previously, but it is easy enough to figure out. Tabs in the journal include Totem Stones (which are the point of the game), Tasks (though there is a visible task list, also), current location info, blueprints and dialogs (all conversations are noted).
Most of the gameplay is fragmented objects that you need to find... except that if you haven't interacted with the proper area first ("found" the pop-up bubble), you can't pick anything up. Somehow, with this game, that's alright. Most games it would frustrate me with, but the items are mostly well-camouflaged, and even if you see them, you may lose track of them again. Once you find an item you can use, you have to place it into the pop-up bubble by shape, rather like a little puzzle.
I came across one dream-like find-the-object-by-list HOG scene, and several doable mini-games (which are SKIPPABLE). HINTS are refillable.
Despite this being a "child's" game, I ended up playing the whole demo and was surprised when it ended. I do think this would be a good game to play with the kids, but also that it's something they couldn't do on their own (at least not the younger ones). The occasional snarky humor is nothing the kids would catch, and I saw nothing that I would deem offensive or suggestive.
Do give this game a chance and don't give up right away - it's worth waiting it out
