Leisure Suit Larry is the gaming series no one wanted to see return. The last installment was a faithful remake of the first game, which only served to remind us that the first game wasn’t very good - and the less said about the 3D games, the better. Why would anyone want another?

The thing is, Larry does have good adventure games to his name - Love For Sail, the last 2D adventure before the crappy 3D ones, is a wonderful point-and-click. If new developer CrazyBunch can make a good-looking 2D Larry game that leans into Love For Sail, add some modern adventure game conveniences (which the remake failed to do), and just generally have fun - then maybe it has a chance. Can Wet Dreams Don’t Dry do that? Actually… yes. It’s not bad at all.

If you don’t know him, Leisure Suit Larry is one of the oldest adventure game series, pre-dating Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion. They’re basically a series of risqué adventures, with the subtlety of a brick dildo to the face. The first game came out in 1987 and featured Larry exploring the city of Lost Wages (Las Vegas, and if you don’t think that’s funny these might not be the games for you) in search of a date, with the goal of getting laid.

Wet Dreams Don’t Dry follows much the same path, with the interesting twist that Larry Laffer has literally been stuck in some sort of time warp for the past 30 years - now he’s got to adjust to New Lost Wages in 2018, along with smartphones, Wi-Fi, gentrification, and just generally being a man - and a series - completely out of time.

I actually like this angle. Larry was always best as a fish out of water, who you couldn’t imagine ever getting a date, so to have him now as a man who doesn’t even know what century he’s in - it’s actually quite fun. The story itself is kept quite simple, although there are twists. Larry wants to date Faith, the highest-level executive of his universe’s version of Apple - which is called Prune (you should see the logo), but to do that he has to get the obscenely high score of 90 on the “Timber” app. At the same time, Prune are up to something with the new PiPhone, and Larry will find himself linked with whatever’s going on.

All of which is just an excuse for a parade of unsubtle sex gags which barely qualify as “innuendo”. The latest Larry is never really laugh-out-loud funny in the way that a Sam & Max or Monkey Island can be, but it’s at least moderately amusing. Things never get too offensive either, as the female characters at least feel like actual characters rather than sex objects. The Deponia series is way more offensive, and that’s not meant to be (it just is).

Puzzles are actually quite smart, in general. There was the odd moment of ridiculous inventory combinations, but for the most part everything made sense and the game did what I wanted to. Furthermore CrazyBunch seems to have embraced the LucasArts philosophy of adventure gaming - no money, no unwinnable situations, no travel costs, and no stupid deaths. There is death, but it’s more for amusement than any real consequence. It’s all far more enjoyable. Well, apart from the Age Test questions at the beginning, which still make no sense.

The only real problem with Wet Dreams Don’t Dry is that it feels a little cheap. There’s basically no animation in the game, other than a couple of moments. The worst part is that while location backgrounds are all packed with interesting things, you can only actually examine or interact with a few things in each location - and they’re almost always important. This consequently makes the game a lot easier than it should be, because if you’re stuck there’s literally only a couple of things you can possibly interact with. The puzzles at the end of the game are only frustrating because they’re so easy, and it clearly seems like there were supposed to be more elaborate puzzles which got cut out.

Performance & Graphics

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MINIMUM:

• OS: Windows Vista / 7 / 8 / 10
• Processor: 2.33GHz or faster x86-compatible processor, or Intel Atom™ 1.6GHz or faster processor for netbook class devices
• Memory: 2 GB RAM
• Graphics: DirectX 9.0c-compatible graphics card with 256 MB VRAM and PixelShader 3.0 support
• Storage: 4 GB Available Space

RECOMMENDED:

• OS: Windows 10

Our system is an AMD FX-8300 Six-Core Processor, 16 Gb RAM, Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti 4Gb, and Windows 10 64-Bit, and it’s overkill for a game like this. Yes, you’re not seeing things and we didn’t leave anything out - the Recommended specs are just “Windows 10”. If your PC can’t run a 2D adventure game, you might want to consider upgrading.

Considering the animation is so cheap, it’s honestly surprising how good Wet Dreams Don’t Dry actually looks. The art isn’t meant to gorgeous, but it is fun and striking. The game’s got its own cartoon style, and all the locations have a lot of neat detail. The music and voice acting isn’t too bad, either.