Adventures are having something of a renaissance thanks to Double Fine's remasters and a slew of new titles. Demetrios is a rude and crude effort - in terms of content - from the slightly warped mind of Fabrice Breton. So, while it may struggle to fit neatly in that renaissance, otherwise we have a fun and polished misadventure set in Paris and then around some less-than-savoury global locations.
Using the touchscreen or point-and-click controls, our unfortunate hero, Bjorn Thonen, starts off being biffed on the head by a burglar, leading to all sorts of low-rent jokes around his crummy, dirty, flat and his even crummier antiques store.
Most of the puzzles are of the find and use, or combine an item, as he meets the neighbours, and performs sub-quests for most of them. That's as he sets out on the quest to find out why a tablet was taken from his antique statue, and why another dealer was murdered just weeks ago for a similar item.
With the police not playing ball, the game soon provides plenty of opportunity for you to die, or end up in jail. However, a quick tap and you're back before you made that fatal move. This is a game that doesn't take the genre, or life, too seriously.
Along the way Bjorn will find a plentiful supply of cookies that he can nibble on to provide a neat clue system. And if you get stuck the game has a reminder of your current objective in the menu. There's also a string of mini-games from fishing to arcade and carnival games to divert your attention and to rake in some coins to buy the odd essential item.
A map screen shows available locations, which come and go as they are needed, you'll pay repeated visits to the police station, but one-off locations soon disappear to save your needlessly revisiting them, which is a good touch. However, you'll need to remember where items are as, you can't randomly pick up everything in the game, so a little memory space or note taking may be required.
With an interesting, and off the wall cast, and quirky solutions to many of the problems, Demetrios is a good laugh and may help attract younger players into the world of the traditional adventure.
Score: 7/10
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Price: £7.99 (PSN)
Developer: Fabrice Breton
Progress: Complete
