Original graphic adventure
Anyone who enjoys interactive fiction like the Zork series or The Tracer Sanction will be sure to find much to entertain them in this little known slice of graphic adventuring. The game takes place in a fantasy realm which offers a neat twist on the genre, by being modelled after the Italian Renaissance period, and provides a complex and well written tale for players to sink their teeth into. You are thrust into the role of Damiano, a young warlock who starts the game out in hell and who must escape to find the sacred stone that will save your hometown from the villainous general who is about to bring war to its peaceful walls, but who is being guided by none other than Lucifer himself. Gameplay is traditional enough, with players exploring a variety of environments using a text-based interface, with simple graphics and more detailed descriptions bringing the world to life. An interesting feature is the good/evil meter, which measures your actions and charts your progress along the path to Lucifer's side and which makes the game stand out slightly from its rivals. The story here is highly compelling and quite original, with a strong atmosphere and well-realised world. The gameplay itself is pretty standard, but suffers somewhat from its limited text parser, which only recognises a few words, with players only able to input two at a time, and which restricts the complexity of the puzzles. Apart from this niggle, this is a solid and imaginative adventure which is well worth investigating for genre fans.
