The Journeyman Project 1: Pegasus Prime

An absolute gem of the point and click genre. This game captured my imagination at a young age and opened me up to new worlds, possibilities and ways of thinking. You mind will be challenged, your heart will race, and if you're patient enough, the greater puzzle this game reveals will profoundly unravel before you. I can't recommend this game enough.

Though I love adventure games I did not play any of the Journeyman Project games until a few days ago, when I bought the remake of The Journeyman Project, and it was really a journey. It feels totally like a 90s game, with a scifi story that has echoes of all the scifi series of that era and a gameplay that mixes cRPG grid movement and even abilities (the chips) with adventure game inventory mechanics. It is slightly clunky and some of the timed puzzles or arcade puzzles could easily had been removed, but still, it is a trip to the tropes of that era and themes and mood that were repeated in Mission Critical, Daedalus Encounter and similar games. A really nice relic from the past.

Just played through the game for the very first time today and it was an absolute blast. The story was exciting, the characters were acted very convincingly and the locations you visit were very atmospheric. I must admit I'd never played a Journeyman Project game before, even though I own all four PC titles in their original big boxes (JMP, JMP Turbo, Buried in Time and Legacy of Time). It was about time I actually played through the first one. Now I'm all excited to dive into the second game in the series. So I don't have any nostalgia goggles, and still this was one of the best games I've played through this year. It's filled with exciting interactive cinematics that really manage to deeply immerse you. If you're into futuristic science-fiction settings, time travel stories, and maybe first-person adventures as well, this one should be high on your "to play next" list. (My personal favorites in this genre are Starship Titanic, Obsidian, Zork Nemesis and Myst III: Exile - and the latter was also developed by Presto Studios, just like Pegasus Prime.) Playing through the game (with a score of 488 out of 500 points) took me about 6 hours and I couldn't stop playing until I was through. A thoroughly enjoyable experience! Two thumbs up, way up!

I had The Journeyman Project Turbo! as a kid and didn't get very far but enjoyed the concept. Some parts aged better than others. The movement is awkward throughout the entire game, and it's unclear what exactly you can interact with, or how - the controls are a bizarre subset of keys involving Backspace and Tilde (unless you have a keyboard with a separate built in number pad I guess). There is a lot of backtracking, and while I appreciate the concept that you're time travelling to the exact same points so it follows that events repeat themselves, it does suck to, for instance, guide a mine cart past obstacles every time you want to proceed past the room after the carts. The puzzles are decent, but for every puzzle that they force into the story, there's another one that just feels like a slog. Sometimes it shines, and the inventory puzzles are really good once you find the things you need, and graciously there's not a lot of pixel hunting. What the game lacks in modern sensibilities it makes up for with charmingly cheesy full-motion video cutscenes, all of which are juuuust campy enough to keep me smiling. And kudos for this particular version allowing you an instant-undeath button if you mess up, so while you probably want to maintain a couple of saves, it doesn't seem possible to softlock or become unwinnable. I think the settings they made are interesting but for a game about time travel it sends you to the era of dinosaurs, once, in the very beginning, and then everything else is already in the distant future, so the time travel is more related to the story than it is a hook for giving the player cool looks into history. It's a different take. It works, but it's not what I expected. Looking forward to the rest of the series, hopefully they're a bit more interesting.

I played this game completely blind: I saw no trailer, no review, no Let's Play, nothing. After starting this game, I had first to was pleasantly surprised by this gem from another time. As someone who played this game in 2022 without nostalgia, I can recommend it to anyone who is looking for adventure games from the 90s and likes to immerse him/herself in a scifi setting. One small nitpick: you have to be willing to put up with controls from that era, and not all the puzzles are obvious. But if you are willing to appreciate them as part of the charm of the 90s gaming era, they won't bother you too much. Both the story and the scenario are captivating and leave you wanting more. I'm already looking forward to the second part :) Atmosphere/Graphics: ★★★★★ (considering the time this game is from) Story & Setting: ★★★★★ (captivating and interesting) Controls: ★★★☆☆ Inventory handling a little confusing at first. Keep in mind that you need the mouse, the arrow keys and the [T] [I] and numpad [7] [9] keys. Stability/Bugs: ★★★★☆ Not problems on windows 10: Downloaded, installed and played. A few crashes, when saving games, but rare enough not to really bother me.