A good game with a lot of interesting aspects that unfortunately feel underdeveloped. Your "inventory" will contain about three items total and is useful only in the information they provide. There is also a "clue" system which you can use to question people with, for the most part never leading anywhere. There's also a "clue-combining" feature which is used exactly once. There are only a few locations to visit, all of which provide exactly one thing you can meaningfully interact with. The conclusion alludes to something far larger and more sinister than what you'd been lead to believe but this is sort of brushed aside at the end. Knowing this is a remake of WE's first game I understand why it skimps a bit, which is why a sequel that furthers its story along would be nice to see. The dialogue choice system is by far the game's most interesting asset. One of note is the "rabbinical response," which basically is just answering a question with another question. This is more than a bit of whimsy, as remembering the nature of a "rabbinical conversation" is essential to your survival when situations turn deadly by the end game. Overall if you're an adventure game fan you'll find this of interest if you're mindful beforehand of its relative lack of gaming content. For $5 I'd say it's worth a look.
NOTE: This review is for the DOS version, included with the download off of the ScummVM website but not available here. The ScummVM download includes the DOS version as well as both the VGA and the EGA versions to try on ScummVM. Unfortunately, the VGA ScummVM version, both the ones I tried off of GOG and ScummVM's website, is virtually unplayable for me. The controls are almost completely broken, such as when I point to an area for my character to move to or interact with he will often not go there, even when a clear path is in place, but rather meander about side to side, in a circle, then come to a complete stop in the middle away from where I actually want him to go. Other times with Ratpouch standing there I will try to move out of the way but my character will be frozen in place with the cursor flickering with every click and Ratpouch repeatedly and annoyingly exclaiming "Excuse me sir!" I could not find reports of anyone else having these particular problems so I just gave up playing this version and tried the DOS version which thankfully was actually PLAYABLE this time, the (many) annoyances, for which I will get to shortly, being nothing of the game-breaking sort. Differences between the DOS and ScummVM versions otherwise are minor, just different samples for the extremely minimal sound effects and music. There is also the EGA version which is the same game as far I know but is graphically more hideous, with really awful textures and colors (and I like the look of some EGA titles so it is not for a bias against it, a lot of the late-80's/early-90's Sierra titles for instance look quite good for their time and retain quite a bit of charm to them). Anyway, as the intro starts, we see the recountings of a simple peasant who accidentally gets caught up with the King's Guard against the nefarious Skorl, a kind of orc/troll/goblin-ish race of creatures led by the demon-possessed enchantress Selena, slaughtering the king and his guards and leaving you captured and imprisoned. Now's your opportunity to break free and defeat Selena and release her iron grip upon the land. Plot doesn't get more complex than that, not that it really has to. For a game as short as it is, there's not much room for narrative depth, rather, you must solve what are mostly basic inventory puzzles to reach your final destination. This is the debut game of Revolution Studios, known better for Beneath a Steel Sky and the Broken Sword games, and the amateurishness sadly wears through in every facet. I feel bad for those who had to pay full price for this back in the day, the only consolation being that it would fund a studio who would go on to make far greater efforts. First, the interface. While you do get used to it after a bit of play it's still pretty cumbersome. Completing many actions requires cycling through various menus and submenus to select various actions and objects, a carry-over from the text parser days minus the quick intuitiveness of an actual text parser (though not having to run through a series of verb-and-noun hunting hoops to find the one particular command the game will accept in a game like this is probably for the better). Another aspect of this is being able to give secondary NPC companions commands varying in their complexity, an interesting element but inefficiently utilized. Two tasks require you to command your initial companion Ratpouch to accomplish but are tasks that you reasonably could have done yourself, if not better and only cannot for no other reason than contrivance (one involves pushing down a brick wall, something your far more fit and in better shape main character would seem to be more capable of doing than the boyish, sickly, just-released-from-torture-rack Ratpouch). Another one is a bit of tacked-on cooperation to get a stuck drawbridge going, and another, by far the most creative one (and the only bit of remotely worthwhile puzzle-solving in the game), requires you to command a lady to go pull switches in a cavern to open certain doors which in turn close others. This is offset by said lady character's opposition to any sort of teamwork by whining and complaining whenever given a command (even though actually GETTING THROUGH THE CAVERN requires some cooperation on her part, something she is unwilling to do on her own otherwise) making her an unlikable dolt pretty fast. The controls themselves are fine but lots of annoying snags can get in the way. Trying to enter through a doorway when another character is just coming through, making your character walk around to stand out of the way and then back is one such thing. Another is trying to speak to a character when yours in not in the proper pre-programmed position (usually because another character is moving about in that exact place) making you have to do it again. And if a character is standing within a doorway there's no way to be able to speak to them (the cursor only indicates the door and not the person standing in front of it) until they actually move away from the door. Cycling through dialogue boxes is also a bit of a chore, especially when the screen is taken up by conversations going on between other characters. Which leads to the one other interesting idea that also is not very well-implemented here, the much-touted "Virtual Theatre" system, in which NPCs go on about their own business with their own interactions with the world. What this really means is that NPCs will move about in every which direction, characters you often need to speak to and thus have to track down, running in circles around town just to find them, which is a bit of an annoyance. Occasionally you can find them in a bar or a shopkeep having an amusing conversation but otherwise it comes across as little more than a gimmick that adds nothing to the experience besides a bit of superficial "realism." As for the game's other aspects, there are the puzzles, which largely involve finding the right inventory item to interact with the right person or object or simply talking to certain people at the right times. A lot of trial and error is involved unless you use a guide, though it's not as bad as it was in, say, Teenagent. There is some semblance of logic and direction here though the solutions to some problems are pretty arbitrary (like the one character who randomly gives you a diary containing the solution to one puzzle). Some pixel hunting is involved, pixels that don't even show up unless you first "look" at the object containing said pixel or accomplish some other vaguely related event trigger. One such egregious one involves where to look for a "cowbane," a kind of flower needed for a potion. Though as I said before there is one somewhat well-thought-out non-inventory puzzle involving a cavern and getting another character to pull switches in the other room but this is one exception. In addition to these there are two tacked-on combat sequences that are frustrating to control and are reduced to furious button mashing (or, er, mouse clicking in this case) to win. Disappointingly, the final confrontation is resolved with a cutscene with no interaction on your part, although it doubtfully would involve much besides another dig through the inventory anyway. The worst one of all though would doubtlessly go to needing to reset the game entirely just for one item to appear, supposedly a bit of copy protection that doesn't show up at all in the manual nor is mentioned in any FAQ (not even Revolution's own damn hint guide!) except for one, and another obscure link I came across mentioning it. Really, completely unnecessary, and the lack of documentation of something as crucial to mention as this is also utterly baffling. The audiovisual presentation is a mixed bag. On the visual end, there are some nice cutscenes with limited animation and the in-game graphics themselves are nicely detailed and such. Problem is how dark and murky everything is, and though I suspect it keeps with the dungeon-esque dark medieval setting it would be nice to be able to see the skies or sun sometime. As for the sounds, well, uhh... the music during the cutscenes is actually fairly well-done which makes the sounds during gameplay all the more baffling. Simply put, the sounds/music here are terrible. They seem to try to replicate things like fire burning, water dripping, bells ringing, rocking chairs rocking, etc. but not only do they not even sound remotely like what they try to imitate but they are the most obnoxious, repetitive, grating sounds possible, sounding rather like a toddler pressing two keys interchangably on a really crappy Casio keyboard. Otherwise the sound is minimal to nonexistant at best so you will not likely miss much by turning the sound off here. If I can say anything good about this is that, though the plot is threadbare and cliched at best, there is some definite dry wit to the writing that really gives some of the inhabitants here some character and a much-needed element of humor. Ratpouch's pleading for a drink of ale despite being too young, the gruff and simple-minded barbarian's musings, Luthern's ill-thought plans of revolt, there are some definite funny moments here. Not enough to make this something I'd recommend playing unless you want to see the leap in quality Revolution made from this to Beneath a Steel Sky (also a free game here I'd recommend playing instead). I suppose it's short enough, but that's another one of its problems, it feels like a quickie demo for all the ideas the studio had that they'd make better use of later on, it lacks much meat to chew on and what meat is there is barely above old-Lunchable-bologna quality. Honestly, giving two stars to this is pretty generous, but it's not a totally botched abomination of gaming and it has some scant redeeming elements so I'd prefer to reserve the one star rating for something truly terrible (if this were a review of the ScummVM version then maybe...) but on the whole this feels just like one big (well, small) nothing of a game that's also really clunky to get through, and it's just not worth it despite the enticing price tag.
