Dragonsphere

The GOG LINUX installer is superb! Works perfectely on my Knoppix7.4 / Linux / DOSbox : )

Story: 3/5 Worldbuilding: 2/5 Art Design: 4/5 Graphics: 3/5 Sound: 4/5 Gameplay: 3/5

Very good story, well-rounded characters and a couple of nice twists. Nice to see that the good memories I had of this game held up quite well.

Most of the really old games I've gotten for free from GoG have been unplayably terrible. They're free for a reason usually, so no surprise there really. This one, however, was actually surprisingly good. For a 25-year old game, the graphics and animation are excellent, a lot better than the large majority of the recent pixel art point and click adventure games. The story in Dragonsphere was well done, and at least for the first part of the game, the puzzles were too. About halfway, through (at the point you reach the sorcerer's tower), the puzzles just go completely in the toilet. It was worth playing through to the end for me to wrap up the story, but at a certain point I mostly gave up on trying to decipher the game designers' moon logic and/or obscure pixel hunting clues and just went straight through to the end with a walkthrough open.

I really like Dragonsphere. It has great atmosphere and heart, but the game desperately needs quality-of-life improvements (not that anyone is going to take the time to implement them). Double-clicking an exit to teleport is possibly the improvement that is needed the most. Currently, pressing the spacebar will skip the walking animation, but this works only in certain areas. An option to increase the walking speed would be very welcome. If clicking on something or using an item on something in a room is not going to produce any result, then there is no need for the character to walk there. Many of the useless hotspots need to be eliminated, such as “floor” and “ground” and “wall”. When the player tries a solution that seems reasonable, the game needs to provide a unique response about why that solution won't work instead of providing an unhelpful (and often nonsensical) generic response. The inventory system needs to be changed so that items can be accessed faster and easier. On the overhead map screen, there needs to be an option to skip the walking-line animation. Currently, the player has to click to advance dialogue. This way is preferred by some players, but there needs to be an option to have the dialogue advance automatically. There is one puzzle that requires the player to read a physical paper document that was originally included with the physical release of the game. This document needs to be put into the game (somewhere in the castle, probably in the king's bedroom). Typos need to be fixed. For a game with so much text, there aren't that many typos, but I did see a few, such as “rever” instead of “revere” and “breath” instead of “breathe”. If the player has completed all tasks in certain areas, those areas should probably be closed off to prevent fruitless and time-consuming wandering to see if anything was missed. Climbing animations and other animations need to be skip-able. There are contextual errors that need to be fixed.