Score: 8/10 | POINT-AND-CLICK | ADVENTURE | MATURE THEMES
“Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry is a faithful return to the series that made Larry Laffer a gamer’s household name. I love the nods to older games in the series and other point-and-click games if you look hard enough and loved how they threw in a few oldschool scenes from the first game in the series to tie it all together.”
Before I get stuck into this new game’s review, I wanted to give a quick backstory into the Leisure Suit Larry Series for those that haven’t heard of it before. For those that have, here’s some nostalgia for you. Leisure Suit Larry is a series of point-and-click adventure games with mature adult content and sexual themes, developed by Sierra On-Line. Sierra was huge in the 80’s with epic adventure game series’ such as King’s Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Quest for Glory, and the Leisure Suit Larry Series, amongst others.
Where the Quest games were adventure games with medieval, sci-fi and modern-day themes centred around a heroic character, Larry Laffer (voiced by Jan Rabson) is the main protagonist in Leisure Suit Larry. He’s a balding disco-loving leisure-suit wearing man in his 40’s and the games revolve around Larry trying to seduce attractive women in luxurious locations such as hotels, ships, beaches, resorts and casinos. As a teenager, I only played these games at my next-door neighbour’s house with no parents around. They were hilarious but also on the edge in terms of phallic symbols and Larry’s often lame attempts to talk dirty and flirty with the ladies.
Here are the first six games in the series:
- Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounging Lizards (1987)
- Leisure Suit Larry Goes Looking for Love (in Several Wrong Places) (1988)
- Leisure Suit Larry III: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals (1989)
- Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work (1991)
- Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out! (1993)
- Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail! (1996)
You may have noticed there’s no 4th game in the series. Creator Al Lowe envisioned the series to only be a trilogy, and thus wrote the ending of LSL3 to have closure. He apparently vowed never to make a 4th game, however as time went on circumstances changed and to keep true to his word, he labelled the 4th game LSL5. The 4th game’s non-existence is a running joke in the series, appearing in Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers under the title Leisure Suit Larry 4: The Missing Floppies. Al Lowe departed Sierra in 1999 and it wasn’t until 2004 that we saw the next game in the series, which also featured a nod to The Missing Floppies.
- Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude (2004)
- Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust (2009)
Magna Cum Laude was developed by High Voltage Software and published by Sierra. Box Office Bust was developed by Team17 and publishing rights were offered to Codemasters. Both games focused on a different protagonist this time, Larry Lovage, who is Larry Laffer’s nephew. While having a nostalgic allure to the originals, they weren’t as well received amongst fans, myself included. I was originally excited to play Magna Cum Laude as it had been years since I had played a LSL game, but was disappointed as it didn’t feel the same with the adventure aspect replaced with mini-games. There was a reboot of the original game in 2013 called Leisure Suit Larry: Rebooted, which was apparently one of the first games to be successfully crowd-funded using Kickstarter.
Fast forward to 2018 and I was super surprised to see a new LSL game being developed, let alone released this year! Enter Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry, with the original voice of Larry, Jan Rabson returning as well.
Mature content warning – The developers describe the content of the game as follows: This game may contain content not appropriate for all ages or may not be appropriate for viewing at work: Nudity or Sexual Content, General Mature Content.
Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry was developed by German developers CrazyBunch and published by Assemble Entertainment. It was released on November 8, 2018 for PC and Mac via Steam and GOG.com. Larry wakes up after being mysteriously transported through time to the 21st century. After an initial underground sequence, Larry finds himself standing in front of a series-familiar site – Lefty’s Bar.
Using the mouse and being well-versed in point-and-click games, I scanned the screen for interactable items to pick up or use. You left-click items to use/pick them up or right-click just to examine them. Pro-tip, you can press the middle mouse button and it will highlight any interactable items. I didn’t figure this out until well into the game – you’re welcome. Upon entering Lefty’s Bar, the nostalgia was running wild with memories of the bar scenes through the early games. In talking with Lefty, he tries to catch Larry up with the times and it’s here where the humour starts, with jibes at modern technology and evolution of games to name a few.
In the bar is Larry’s first potential conquest, Becky, who is glued to her shiny box (phone). She mentions her displeasure at the bar only having 23 fans on Instacrap (Instagram) and half a star on Gulp (Yelp). She also references Farcebook (Facebook) and Timber (Tinder), which becomes a critical part of your arsenal. A bit further into the game you use an Uunter (Uber) to the office of Prune (Apple) to meet BJ (Bill Jobs, CEO of Prune) and the phallic symbols start rearing their heads.
Every new scene in this game had me crack up laughing as I spotted funny names or items, such as the restaurant named Long Dong, the Prune logo and the poor bird splatted against the glass. Inside we are greeted by two nerdy employees named Kyle and Finley who set me up with a PiPhone and then we meet with BJ and his assistant, Faith. Larry straight away starts hitting on Faith who tries to fob him off by saying she only dates men who have a Timber profile with a minimum of 90 points. Larry makes it his mission to go on as many dates as he can to raise his Timber profile, so he can then date Faith, thus creating the main plot of the game.
Kyle and Finley help set up your Timber profile, after sending you on a mission to bring back some questionable items. This is where you had to start thinking about how to use items together in your inventory, as well as how they would interact with items in a scene. Over the course of the game you pick up some weird and whacky items, and sometimes you wouldn’t think that two items would be used together, but when you’re stuck, just try different combinations and you’ll be surprised.
From here, I had to search Timber and swipe left or right on ladies and guys (Finley listed Larry as bisexual to increase my broader appeal) and there were some hilarious names. The Vagiana Sisters with the tag (one part of us is identical), Maxime Paine (likes it hard), Sara Soft (raid my tomb) and there’s also Richard Ryder, model, lifestyle coach and dreamer. There are over 30 characters you’ll meet during your travels. Here’s one that made me chuckle and a shout out to Overwatch fans.
As you find more Timber matches, the map of New Lost Wages opens with more locations which you use an Uunter to get around to them with quick loading screens. You will be using this system a lot as you complete many fetch quests and try to find items in each scene, and your dates icons are also displayed on the map.
As you go on dates and complete quests for them, eventually Larry does get to home base where some hilarious Instacrap slides are recorded on your PiPhone. Your dates give you a Timber rating which slowly climbs towards the goal of 90 points and a date with Faith, though it is slow going with only 3-6 points from each date. There were also plenty of cringe-worthy scenes where it almost went too far with the sexual content – you don’t see it but knowing was enough for a cringe or two. Sometimes you’ll play relationship manager for people and another time you’ll help to set up a wedding for Lance and Dick which was a great ceremony by celebrant Tuck R. Dale.
There is a great sequence towards the end of the game where you are knocked out and you wake up in a dream state inside Lefty’s toilet from the first game, using the graphics from the 1987 game. This was a cool nod to the beginning of the series and has a jibe at one of the political leaders of today. I’ll let you play through the game to see how those scenes unfold.
Overall, as a fan of the series I gave the game an 8 out of 10. Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry is a faithful return to the series that made Larry Laffer a gamer’s household name. I love the nods to older games in the series and other point-and-click games if you look hard enough (Where’s Dildo?, Day of the Tentacle and the Sierra logo) and loved how they threw in a few of the oldschool scenes from the first game in the series to tie it all together. The conversations and imagery are classic Larry, though there were a few scenes that had me cringing in awkwardness. If you’re a fan of the series, pick this game up as it’s a barrel of laughs, and if you’re new to the series, heed the mature rating and don’t take events in the game too seriously.
Here’s some gameplay footage of the first 74-minutes if you want to see how the game actually plays and watch the hilarious conversations and quests Larry carries out in his quest for love.
This review utilised the Steam version of the game with 9 hours of gameplay. Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry is available now on Steam and GOG.com.
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