Fenimore Fillmore: 3 Skulls of the Toltecs Review for Steam

Fenimore Fillmore: 3 Skulls of the Toltecs opening gripped me immediately with a powerful sense of nostalgia. A 4k remaster of the 1996 classic by Casual Brothers, this is precisely the kind of old school, 2D point-and-click adventure game that I had always wanted to play but never been exposed to. It was also a genre I was born a little late for. A charmingly clumsy ms-paint style animation opens the game and pushes you firmly down into the hokey world of the pixelated western. The animation and voice acting have been touched up but unaltered – this is as 90’s as we can get.

The titular protagonist, Fenimore Fillmore, is a first rate fool – foppish, bewilderingly naive protagonist who feeds a wounded man hair lotion instead of medicine, killing him almost instantly. “How was I supposed to know it was the wrong bottle?” Mumbles Fillmore afterwards. This sense of bumbling ineptness translates well into the game’s controls: You direct him around the world by clicking where you want to go, and interact with the world by selecting a number of options from the bottom left hand corner of the screen – investigate, use, open door, talk, etc. It took me a little while to get used to. I’ve been spoiled my modern GUI’s and more responsive in browser flash games, but, at the same time, it also made successfully solving puzzles, or navigating to new areas, that much more rewarding.

The puzzles themselves are not immediately clear – most rely on the tried and true method of finding a random item in a bin nearby and holding onto it as you search across the game world for matching components. The puzzles here are clever, if a little long and frustrating at times – at least to me, I enlisted a veteran of the genre to watch over my shoulder and laughingly point out what I’m missing – but the real joys here are delightful nuggets of absurdity buried away in the flavor of the world. This the Old West, specifically 1866 during the midst of border skirmishes and much lawlessness, but there’s still a bright fluorescent P parking sign by the stables, and at one point Fillmore refers to the desert as containing nothing but sand and 7/11’s.

Is Fenimore Fillmore: 3 Skulls of the Toltecs a fun game? I had fun playing, though it frustrated me at times. It successfully made me nostalgic for a kind of game, or, an era of gaming, that I’d arrived too late for, and it did so in spite of controls that made me want to yell in frustration at times. The gameplay is a little dated, but the payoff of solving puzzles and moving forward after spending an hour or so clicking through and exploring a lovingly restored western town is indescribably satisfying, and the tongue in cheek writing, absurdist humor, and loving attention to detail made this a world that I wanted to keep exploring. I’d give it a 7.9/10 – a little rough around the edges, but definitely worth playing.

Check Out the Fenimore Fillmore: 3 Skulls of the Toltecs Trailer:

Fenimore Fillmore: 3 Skulls of the Toltecs is available for $9.99 for PC via Steam.