With Wet Dreams Don’t Dry, Larry makes the jump to the 21st century but loses some of its charm in the process. Still, it’s a pretty decent point-and-click game.
Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry is an old-school point-and-click adventure game, with an emphasis on “old.”
Everything about the new Larry reboot feels old, from the gameplay to its satire of the 21st century as a whole, and the dating scene in particular. Sometimes that’s a good thing, especially if, like me, you’re a fan of 90’s adventure games. But other times, it just makes you roll your eyes and groan audibly, like what I imagine an actual date with the titular Larry would feel like.
A “Man” Out of Time
Larry Laffer was a gaming icon in the late 80s and early 90s and for a good reason. His games were funny, clever, and often lewd, which was a perfect combination for many teens and adults alike. Now, Larry is trying his luck with the 21st-century crowd
As the game starts, Larry simply appears in the city of New Lost Wages in the year 201X (the game doesn’t specify a year, but you can easily assume it’s “this year”). From there, things move on fairly quickly until the primary objective of the game is revealed: score enough points on a dating app called Timber so you can date the woman of your dreams.
There’s a bit towards the end where the story starts taking a different direction, but it fizzles out without any kind of satisfaction. Again, very much like a date with the titular Larry. For the most part, we wander around New Lost Wages, looking for love and little else.
I wish I could say more about the story, but there really isn’t much else to say. Wet Dreams Don’t Dry is more a series of jokes and innuendoes than a real, solid narrative. I do like how it doesn’t waste time explaining how Larry got to our time and instead chooses to move right along to the meat of things. What Larry is doing in the 21st century isn’t all that important, after all. We’re here for the ladies, toilet humor, and point-and-click puzzles.
Girls, Girls, Girls
The ladies, and pretty much everyone else in Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry, are all exaggerated stereotypes. You have the hot nerd, the hot rocker chick, the hot-but-distant businesswoman, and so on.
All of them are one-note jokes, but are different enough from one another that interacting with them doesn’t feel repetitive in any way. Luckily, each of the girl’s questline is relatively short, so they never lose their charm. Just don’t expect to find any meaningful interactions that go beyond “you, me, sex, now” and the occasional cringy one-liner.
Surprisingly enough, Wet Dreams Don’t Dry portrays all of these women (and several men) in a way that’s never really offensive. Yes, they are all stereotypes, but they are never presented in a negative, or even too absurd way. Plus, not every game can depict a gay wedding in such a sweet manner (even if a bit over-the-top in some aspects).
At the end of each questline, we are treated to a short, somewhat steamy cutscene as a reward. These are much tamer than you’d expect for a Larry game, and there’s never any full nudity or anything too provocative (sorry, horny teens). These cutscenes are a combination of raunchy and pathetic, which is perfect for a Larry game. They are even framed as an Instagram story (or Instacrap, as the game calls the app), which suits the game’s take on how technology has changed dating since the 80s.
Funny, but Not “Haha” Funny
The clash between Larry’s old ways and the technology and social awareness of the 21st century is where most of the game’s humor comes from – the part that’s a little bit more than “haha, it looks like a vagina,” at least. It’s a small part, but a dominant one. Unfortunately, that’s also that game’s weakest point.
The new Larry’s commentary about how we’re all slaves to our phones, or how giant tech companies are getting us to willingly give them our most inner secrets (and all of our money) is nothing new. We’ve seen it done to death in countless TV shows, movies, and other video games. I could forgive that it was at least funny, but it isn’t. Instead, the humor seems to appeal more to those who use the term “millennial” as an insult and look down on this entire generation.
Fans of old-school Larry shouldn’t worry though; Leisure Suit Larry was always funny in a pathetic and dirty way, and Wet Dreams Don’t Dry keeps toeing that line. The humor in the game is classic Larry: everything that’s even remotely phallic or yonic (look it up) is front and center, and every second line of dialogue is an innuendo.
There’s this one small part where the game changes drastically in tone, and it almost feels like it’s going to have something profound to say about the way the Larry series and today’s society as a whole portray and treat women. But then it passes, and the game never mentions it again, like it’s no more than a throwaway joke.
It’s clearly done on purpose, which makes me wonder whether there were a few people in CrazyBunch pushing for a more critical and self-aware version of Larry, or if the developers just thought it was funny. Nevertheless, it seems really out of place but still somehow the most impactful moment in the entire game.
Point-and-Click Pic
Speaking of the best part of the game – this has to be the actual pointing and clicking. So the new Larry isn’t particularly funny, and the plot is more of an excuse for some good old-fashioned silliness, but at least the gameplay itself is good for the most part.
The puzzles are the part where the game’s old-school approach is best realized. You have an inventory, where you stick everything that isn’t nailed down, and you can even combine items to create new ones. It’s like every classic adventure game you’ve ever played, and it’s pretty great.
However, just like those classic adventure games, this one also suffers from a case of “moon logic” – that’s when a solution to a puzzle is so bizarre and illogical, the only way you can figure it out is by accident (or repeatedly using everything on everything else). There aren’t a lot these instances, but a couple of examples stand out. The game even acknowledges that, as if to apologize, but it doesn’t make it any better.
I can go on about how the game’s dialogue options aren’t as rich as I hoped they would be, and characters often have only one response, no matter what you choose to say to them. Or how you need to go back and forth between the same two locations to solve certain puzzles. Or how you need to use the freaking keycard on the elevator every single time instead of having it happen automatically after the first time…
But I won’t. These are all small things, and while they do make the experience a tiny more bothersome, they don’t detract from the overall enjoyment. Wet Dreams Don’t Dry is an old-school adventure game that plays like one, and if that’s your thing, then the other stuff won’t really bother you.
All Dried Out
Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry is a competent point-and-click adventure game that looks nice and offers some fun puzzles to solve. It also manages to make the transition of the 21st century relatively smoothly, without falling into the trap of being overly PC or overly offensive. However, in doing so, the game loses some of the charm old Larry games had.
The humor often comes off as outdated or just not daring enough. I found myself groaning more often than laughing, which isn’t good. With a better script and a plot that wasn’t ripped straight from 1996’s Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail, Wet Dreams Don’t Dry could have been better.
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