Previous Next

The story behind this game is truly bizarre. Cocoa is a parsley-loving rabbit who has built a time machine. To make it more efficient, he goes back to 1899 to ask the great inventor Nikola Tesla for advice. Unfortunately, he not only ends up in the middle of a meteor shower, but discovers that Tesla is being harassed by some mysterious secret agents, who want to get their hands on his inventions. Cocoa offers to help Tesla, from whom he receives a strange megaphone-like device. During the game you will discover its different uses, first of all bouncing bullets fired by enemies back to their sender.

Twenty Four Hour Parsley People is divided into three episodes that can be played immediately, although the game manual recommends following the order in which they are told. In the first, Cocoa must save Tesla and his laboratory from the assault of the baddies; in the second, he infiltrates the underground base of the secret agents to find the blueprint of one of Tesla's inventions they have stolen; finally, in the third you must recover some of Tesla's inventions before they are taken away and free Kolman, the inventor's assistant, who has been taken prisoner by the enemies.

All three episodes are structured following a platforms-and-ladders scheme, but besides finding objects or people, Cocoa must also use the environments to his advantage. In fact, on some screens there are machines to operate in order to open passages or get rid of particularly annoying enemies. In the third episode Cocoa is also able to fly thanks to the device Tesla gave him. Normally I don't like having to use two different controls for Up and Jump, but here the division actually makes sense, since there are times when Cocoa has to operate a machine, for example a magnet, by moving it up and down, and should he jump at the same time, doing it would become practically impossible.

Graphically, the game stands out for its style full of details and colours, even if screens are sometimes cluttered with elements and "colour clash" becomes inevitable in these cases. Sound effects are the default and somewhat unpleasant AGD ones; I would have liked some custom sounds instead. However, you can hear some nice AY music when playing on a 128K.

Twenty Four Hour Parsley People is a large arcade adventure, with plenty of surprises and unusual touches, and the ability to fly in the third episode adds a new dimension to the gameplay. The first two episodes can be downloaded for free from the author's page on the itch.io website, but I am sure that after trying them you will be more than willing to pay a small price to purchase the full version.