Later Alligator (2019)

Later Alligator has you investigating an upcoming "Event" for Pat, a cute but paranoid little alligator who believes his family is plotting to kill him. You'll seek out and speak to each of the few dozen family members across the city to gather clues as to the true nature of the Event and report before reporting back to Pat.

This game exudes charm through the goofy animations that add so much character to every member of the alligator family. The music, too, only adds to this game's great presentation. While playing I was treated to whimsical jazz with silly lyrics that play on the fact that the denizens of this city all seem to be alligators.

Where I feel the game falls a bit short of its potential is its gameplay. Each character also has their own little minigame you need to play before they'll give you any information. These range from short creative experiences (conducting a quartet of gators as they sing out of tune) to tired classics (another one of those damn sliding block puzzles) to tedious slogs (choose the right option of three in a fake dating sim, get punished for not picking correctly). They're all appropriately silly but my love for the writing can only stretch so far when the minigames vary so wildly in quality.

I think Later Alligator is still very worth experiencing. It has a great sense of humor and the animations are fluid and fun to watch, but I've never been a fan of using an array of disparate minigames as a core gameplay mechanic outside of maybe Mario Party. Thankfully, the game is only a couple of hours long, so it's difficult for it to overstay its welcome too much and is the better for it.

I really love the look of this game, and I could watch its beautiful hand-drawn animation for hours. I also enjoyed the writing and quirky dialog, it gave me plenty of chuckles.

The only thing keeping this at three stars for me is that the actual gameplay... the stuff you're tasked to do in order to make progress... just wasn't very fun. Many of the minigames seemed too simple to hold my interest, too luck-based, or they introduced a time limit that felt at odds with the game's overall pace.

But if you're a fan of 2-D character animation, you should definitely give it a whirl!

My sister turned me onto this game. I was taken by the lively animation style, musical score, and goofy humor.

First thing to get out of the way is the gameplay of Later Alligator. This is one of those games that remind me of some of the fancier Flash games I'd play on Notdoppler back in the day. You just meet characters who have a little text box of dialogue, no voice acting, but lots of animation loops. Then they have a little minigame for you to play. These range from sliding puzzles that insult you for taking too long or I Spy games you are meant to fail. And the twist and humor they have in these minigames also feels very classic Flash games. They are all fun and don't take up too much time as to feel cumbersome. There's even a few rounds of Old Maid, a game loved to play as a kid.

The animation/art style is the star of this game. The game was created by an apparently famous animation couple. Later Gator does have a very Saturday Morning cartoon/Flash game animation style that I quite enjoy. It's lots of simple designs and angular lines, but the characters still feel unique and show emotions. It's a very campy and cute style. The colors are muted, not completely black & white, but nothing pops with color. My guess this is due to the sorta film noir vibe they are going for.

The music is another star in this game. There's a bunch of different tunes that help flavor the various locations. Most of the city scenes have jazzy big band beat, the minigame tunes sound like tunes I'd hear in Sly Cooper or an older NES game. Another tune wouldn't sound out of place in an old silent film score.

In this game you play as a mysterious investigator with a "clearly visible face" who helps Pat, an adorably anxious gator who thinks his family is out to snuff him out on his birthday. You meet his family who are usually some type of Italian alligator, because this game is in Alligator NYC. There's a lot of doofy humor in this game. Nothing I can recall as being laugh out loud funny more just chuckle to yourself at the clever pun or absurd statement, which is a type of humor I enjoy. The dad is a stereotypical sitcom dad who is aware that he doesn't know how to properly express his emotions, cousin Mikey runs a 3 Card Monty scam & talks about his skin condition a lot, to comedic effect. All the minigames have puny titles.

Spoiler for the story here, so skip to "All in all" to avoid them. You learn pretty early on that Pat is just a little paranoid and the event his family is planning is a surprise birthday party, not a hit. You may also notice your character is a very well dressed gator with a suitcase full of leather gloves and knives. You know, stuff a hitman would carry around. I figured, with this game's humor, they were faking me out and I was actually gonna be the party's magician, but no you actually are a hitman sent to kill Pat. And you learn this after the 2nd playthrough. They place an arbitrary time limit on you and so you have to play the game 3 times to see the whole story, but it's short enough that it isn't a huge ask. It turns out Pat, being the doofus he is, accidently hired his own hitman, but luckily you have a change of heart and decide to not go through with it.

All in all, this game is a great, little indie game with a great art style. The story is a fun, doofy romp that doesn't take itself too seriously and the characters are fun to interact with. This game isn't too expensive on Steam because it's a short game, so I highly recommend this to anyone that likes the art, music, or story synopsis.