Dragonsphere
| Dragonsphere | |
|---|---|
| Studio | MicroProse |
| Publisher | MicroProse |
| Senior Developer | Douglas Kaufman |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
January 7, 1994 |
| platform | MS-DOS |
| Game engine | MADS |
| genre | Point-and-click adventure |
| Game mode | Single player |
| control | mouse |
| medium | Floppy disk, CD-ROM |
| language | English |
Dragonsphere (German: Dragon sphere) is a point-and-click adventure from the US manufacturer MicroProse . It was released in 1994 for MS-DOS computers.
action
Dragonsphere takes place in a fantasy world developed for this game. The player takes on the role of Callash, the newly crowned King of Gran Callahach. 20 years earlier, the evil wizard Sanwe, who threatened to conquer the country, had been locked up by the court wizard of Callash's father in a magical tower on the edge of the kingdom. A magical glass ball exhibited in the king's palace provided an indicator of the integrity of Sanwe's prison and suddenly showed threatening cracks at the start of the game. Even before his capture, Sanwe had threatened terrible revenge, which calls for immediate action from Callash. He travels through his kingdom to seek the help of various races and finally to put Sanwe in his tower.
Game principle and technology
Dragonsphere is a second generation graphic adventure: It can be played completely without a keyboard, but still uses a text menu to simulate inputs into a parser . The upper 80% of the screen represent the environment as hand-drawn, partially animated graphics, over which the game character and NPCs are placed as animated sprites . The result is similar to a cartoon controlled by the player. The lower 20% of the screen is made up of a list of verbs and available objects, whereby the objects can be movable objects, parts of the scenery or NPCs. By combining a verb with one or more objects, the player can interact with his environment. Typical ways of interacting are closely examining the game environment, communicating with NPCs and manipulating objects.
Production notes
Dragonsphere is the third graphics adventure that MicroProse developed using the MicroProse Adventure Development System engine. The two predecessors were Rex Nebular and Return of the Phantom. The CD-ROM version of Dragonsphere contains speech output due to the significantly higher storage space.
The script for Dragonsphere comes from Douglas Kaufman, who followed Sid Meier to Firaxis Games after the sale of MicroProse and designed strategy games such as Rise of Nations and Age of Empires there and later at Big Huge Games .
Since 2011, Dragonsphere has been available free of charge to registered customers of Gog.com in a version that can run on modern Windows systems.
reception
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Adventure Gamers praised the puzzles, the graphics and the detailed game world, but criticized the flat character drawing and the short playing time of around five hours. PC Joker particularly emphasized the good animations and called the game an "all-round successful adventure". Power Play noted the story, graphics and music positively, but criticized the "aged" interface with its verb menu and consequently criticized the gameplay as "awkward". Computer Gaming World described the animations as "lifelike" and praised the dialogue system, which on the one hand actually had an impact on the further course of the story, but did not hinder its "flow". CGW criticized the speech output of the CD-ROM version as "hollow and lifeless".
Web links
- Dragonsphere at MobyGames (English)
- complete solution
Individual evidence
- ↑ Adventure Classic Gaming
- ↑ Adventure Gamers
- ↑ PC Joker
- ↑ Power Play
- ↑ Computer Gaming World # 120, July 1994, p. 46ff, available online