Hellowoon
| Hellowoon | |
|---|---|
| Studio | Dragonware Games |
| Publisher | Ariolasoft |
| Senior Developer | Guido Henkel |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
1987 |
| platform | Amiga , Atari ST , C64 |
| genre | Text adventure |
| control | keyboard |
| medium | diskette |
| language | German |
Hellowoon is a text adventure with graphics by the German development studio Dragonware, which was published in 1987 by the publisher Ariolasoft for the Amiga , Atari ST and C64 systems . In its time it was one of the few sophisticated text adventures that were written in German.
action
In the fantasy world of Boran, the evil wizard Kronos tried to overthrow the good king Aaron. A fight broke out between Kronos and Aaron's court magician Gandalf, in the course of which both magicians were killed; moreover, Gandalf's wand broke in two. In view of the resulting power vacuum, Kronos' helper Hellowoon seized power in Boran and established a regime of terror.
The player takes on the role of Zarrak, Aaron's son and regular heir to the throne, and has to put a stop to Hellowoon. Since Zarrak suffers from amnesia at the beginning of the game, he must first find out his identity before he can start the real task: Find and unite the two parts of Gandalf's wand and finally defeat Hellowoon with the help of magic.
Game principle and technology
Hellowoon is a text adventure, which means that the environment and events are displayed as screen text and the visualization is largely up to the player's imagination. In contrast to classic text adventures, which do not have any graphic decorations, Hellowoon comes up with a picture of the respective environment. The game is controlled by keyboard inputs formulated as an imperative ("take sword"), which are broken down, analyzed and processed by a parser .
Production notes
Designer Guido Henkel , who later worked as a designer for the game series Das Schwarze Auge: Die Nordland-Trilogie and as a producer for Planescape: Torment , also acted as a programmer for his commercial debut Hellowoon , which he created together with Uwe Matthäus . Henkel used the adventure The Count by Scott Adams , published in 1979, as inspiration . He offered the game, which he had initially designed in English, without graphics and only for the Atari ST, to Tronic-Verlag, which, however, refused it. A year later, after the game texts were translated into German, graphics were added and the parser was adapted to the German language, it was published by the Gütersloh publisher Ariolasoft; Portings for the Amiga and the C64 followed. Henkel received 20,000 Deutschmarks as a fee from the Bertelsmann subsidiary Ariolasoft.
The (unusually square) game box from Hellowoon included a short story in the style of a fairy tale, which outlined the history of the game.
reception
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Manfred Kleimann praised the "excellent graphics" and the "rich vocabulary" in the ASM and stated that Hellowoon was "one of the most valuable programs of this genre". Stephan König emphasized in Atari magazine that Hellowoon was "excellently successful" despite the difficult German language compared to English, and rated the game as an "absolute top hit". Werner Hiersekorn stated in the Amiga Joker as part of a review of another Dragonware game that Hellowoon had prepared the way for German-language text adventures "with class".
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Blog entry on GuidoHenkel.com. Retrieved November 4, 2015 .
- ↑ a b c Review in ASM 11/87. Retrieved November 1, 2015 .
- ↑ Article about Guido Henkel on PCGames.de. Retrieved November 4, 2015 .
- ↑ Reproduction of the manual on Atarimania.com. Retrieved November 3, 2015 .
- ↑ Review in Atari magazine 4/88. Retrieved November 3, 2015 .
- ↑ Amiga Joker 5/90. Retrieved November 4, 2015 .