Pepper's Adventures in Time (Sierra On-Line) - 1993

Series: Let's Adventure! A Journey into Adventure Games (1980-1999)

This review is part of the Let's Adventure! series. See all reviewed games sorted by rating here.

• ← Leisure Suit Larry III: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals! (Sierra On-Line) - 1989
• Pepper's Adventures in Time (Sierra On-Line) - 1993

Article 96 of 96 in this series.

Pepper’s Adventures in Time is an educational adventure game released in 1993 by Sierra On-Line. The project was based on a concept by Sierra VP of Development/Creative Director, Bill Davis, who also designed the game’s main characters. This was intended to be the first in a series of edutainment games in which the player, as Pepper, traveled back in time to set right mixed-up situations surrounding famous individuals.

This point n’ click adventure game is actually an edutainment (entertainment leading to education) title developed by Sierra, who were also responsible for other games such as the EcoQuest and Dr. Brain series. The object of this game is to help a little girl called Pepper, solve puzzles based on history and logic, so that she can fix the mess caused by Dr. Fred’s time machine. At certain points in the game, the player is even allowed to control her pet dog, Lockjaw.

The game consists of an educational factor where the player can learn about many important facts concerning the colonial times of the United States. It is divided into Acts in which the player has to reach given goals and, apart from other, typical for adventure games things, learn about facts listed in the opening. To do it the special TRUTH icon has to be used. When the act is concluded, the player is challenged with a quiz about the things he learned. For each correct answer he receives progress points.

Cartoonish graphics similar to the style in Day of the Tentacle were used in order to appeal to younger audiences.¹

I actually found the music in this game also reminiscent of Day of the Tentacle, however both games came out the same year so it’s possible this was just a coincidence. Unlike DOTT however, this game really isn’t all that much fun.

As an “edutainment” game, the gameplay elements are toned down quite a bit, so there isn’t all that much you need to do - and what there is becomes extremely repetitive.

The plot seems to involve your uncle - who really hates Ben Franklin for some reason - building a time machine that he’ll use to go back and change the course of history … for reasons.

You start the game off as Pepper, and along with her dog Lockjaw get sucked into the machine and thrown back to colonial times - but when you get there it seems things are not the way you’d expect based on the history you learned in school.

Being a Sierra SCI game you have access to the typical verb icons (WALK, TALK, GET, etc), along with a couple that are unique to this game (TRUTH and QUIZ). There are also portions of the game where you take control of Pepper’s dog Lockjaw, which gives you a different set of verbs.

The Lockjaw segments do actually help break up the monotony of endless fetch quests that make up the majority of this game.

You can click the TRUTH icon on almost everything, and it will tell you if the thing you’re inspecting is historically accurate. This is a unique mechanic to this game that is actually sort of interesting, as a handful of these facts will be required in the quiz you have to take at the end of the chapter.

When a fact will be included in the quiz, you’ll get points for it and the text color will be different, so it at least stands out. This is helpful as there’s SO MUCH reading in this game, and so many of the facts just sort of blend together.

Each Act begins with a summary of the things to look out for (which correlate with the end of chapter quiz), as well as the objectives to complete the act.

The QUIZ icon in the menu bar will display this information at any time during the chapter, which is helpful because I found I forgot the objectives very quickly.

Each quiz just corresponds to the clues you were given at the beginning of the chapter. If you found the associated facts while playing, the quiz itself is fairly straightforward.

Other than clicking the TRUTH icon everywhere, you’ll also be able to talk to most characters about exactly 4 topics. There is zero variety in the gameplay when you’re playing as Pepper, which really makes this game feel like a chore.

Once you land in colonial times, after you are captured and escape from a storage shed your dog Lockjaw will be captured by the daughter of the main villain. After this, you can ask all characters about:

• Ben Franklin
• The Pughs (the villains)
• Your Dog
• Themselves

That’s it. I understand this is probably more of an “entry level” game, but there’s so little to do that it just becomes repetitive and monotonous to play.

For some reason there are hippies in the past. I guess this was the result of your Uncle’s messing with time travel - but the way these characters were written it seems the game developers really didn’t like hippies …

You typically have maybe 10 game screens to walk between, and every act involves many (MANY!) fetch quests. All you really do in this game is get something from point A and bring it to character B.

Some of the fetch quests are actually fairly involved, so I’m surprised they’d have included them in a children’s edutainment game. For example, getting everything ready for Ben Franklin to recreate his Kite/Key experiment requires you to first build a leyden jar (which is described in the manual).

Maybe I’m just not giving 90’s kids enough credit, but this was a fairly involved (and lengthy) fetch quest.

The whole point of the game is to get your dog back from the Pugh’s, and to prove that they’ve imposed a false tax on the people of Philadelphia - which you ultimately end up doing.

Not having grown up in the United States I’m not really sure how meaningful or relevant this content is, but I’m guessing the characters are historically important and worth incorporating into a game to make teaching kids about them more appealing.

My final impression of this game is “I just don’t get it”. None of this was fun, and advancing the plot felt like work.

If you find this period of American history interesting though there’s quite a bit you’d be able to learn by revisiting the game and just clicking everything with the TRUTH icon. The writing can be clever in places, but some of the jokes and commentary don’t really seem appropriate for a younger audience - so I’m not really sure who this game was made for.

In one scene in the mansion with Lockjaw I was able to crash ScummVM, by biting Pugh, then sniffing the powder on the desk then grabbing the key - but I couldn’t reproduce it consistently so didn’t file a bug report.

User picked target 'pepper' (engine ID 'sci', game ID 'pepper')...
Running Pepper's Adventures in Time (DOS/English)
resource.000: 670d0c53622429f4b11275caf7f8d292, 5459574 bytes.
resource.map: 72726dc81c1b4c1110c486be77369bc8, 5179 bytes.
Patching TWISTYSG.DIR failed - resource type mismatch

ERROR: [pepper-1.000 610/999 sPercyGotYou::dispose @ 0786]: [VM] Stack index 4096 out of valid range [0..4095]!

Since this is a Sierra game, you could find yourself in game-over territory fairly frequently, but instead of just RESTORE and RESTART options, you could also TRY AGAIN. This made slogging through this game a bit more bearable as it took you back to right before you made the wrong choice.

Game Information

Game	Pepper’s Adventures in Time
Developer	Sierra On-Line
Publisher	Sierra On-Line
Release Date	1993
Systems	DOS, Windows 3.x
Game Engine	SCI

My Playthrough

How Long To Beat?	4 hours
Version Played	DOS via ScummVM
Notes	Walkthrough, Manual

Score

See here for a refresher on how we’re scoring these games.

Graphics (15)	8
Sound (10)	6
Plot / Progression (25)	12
Characters / Development (15)	7
Gameplay / Experience (15)	4
Replayability (5)	2
Impact / Impression (10)	3
Bonus / Surprise (5)	2
	44%

Gallery

Footnotes

1. Description from Moby Games ↩︎