Hexuma
| Hexuma | |
|---|---|
| Studio | World forge |
| Publisher | Software 2000 |
| Senior Developer | Harald Evers |
| composer | Chris Huelsbeck |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
1992 |
| platform | Amiga , DOS |
| genre | Text adventure |
| medium | diskette |
| language | German |
| copy protection | Enclosure referencing |
Hexuma is a text adventure with graphics by the German development studio Weltenschmiede , which was published in 1992 by Software 2000 for the Amiga and DOS PCs.
action
The player takes on the role of an employee of a realtor's office who is supposed to inspect an old, hearsay-cursed house in an English raised bog. The house was built on the site of a cursed knight's castle in the 15th century and drove several of its residents insane. In the 1920s, a scientist, Owen Jugger, lived in and examined the house, but after a while he disappeared without a trace. While the player is looking at the house in Today (1992), a package is sent to him that is addressed to Jugger, that is, was 65 years away. It contains Jugger's diary, which mentions his research on the evil god Kal, who has been sleeping for ages. Since, according to the diary, Kal threatens to wake up and return to earth, the player decides to continue Jugger's work. The house turns out to be a gateway to different ages in human history. The player has to visit five ages and retrieve five crystal fragments in order to finally defeat Kal.
Game principle and technology
Hexuma 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 decoration, Hexuma comes up with a picture of the respective environment and a point-and-click interface with which simple commands can be created with the mouse. For complex commands, however, text entries that are processed by a parser must be used. Some of the still images are clickable and reveal detail views that provide additional information. Hexuma contains music, which is unusual for a text adventure: the individual ages are each highlighted with a piece of music by Chris Hülsbeck .
Production notes
Hexuma is the last game in a trilogy of text adventures from the manufacturer Weltenschmiede; The hourglass appeared in 1990 and The Cathedral in 1992. All three adventures deal with the topics of time travel and multidimensionality. Hexuma is one of eight games that publisher Software 2000 named "Artventure", which should indicate the high quality of the so-called adventure games. The game packaging from Hexuma included so-called "Feelies", items that match the game, such as fictional documents or gimmicks , which often allow a deeper insight into the game world. In the case of Hexuma , these were a replicated crystal shard, a diary with information essential for the game solution, a typewritten letter and a poster.
The fourth leap in time leads to a tropical island world, which already appeared in another work by Evers: The map and room descriptions are used in the manual for the predecessor, The Cathedral, as sample rooms to explain how the game works. The Hexuma manual contains a scenario from the cave world saga to explain the course of the game , which according to the manual should be part of another text adventure from world forge called Hexuma 2 - Twilight on the cave world , but which was never realized and was instead processed in terms of content in the graphic adventure The cave world saga .
Author Harald Evers was primarily active as a novelist; his best-known work is the fantasy novel cycle Die Höhlenweltsaga . The title music for Hexuma and the pieces of music played during the game were composed by Chris Hülsbeck . Programmer Andreas Niedermeier stayed in the industry after Weltenschmiede left and worked for heart-line Software u. a. responsible for development and programming by Kurt: The football manager .
reception
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The German magazine Amiga Joker praised that the interface had been consistently further developed compared to its predecessor, The Cathedral , and the graphics of the DOS version were positively highlighted. The magazine drew parallels with the Magnetic Scrolls adventures . The Power Play presented a positive development compared to the two previous Adventures fixed and evaluated, author Evers was on his way to the "guru of the German text adventures". The magazine praised the game story, which had influences from Edgar Allan Poe and HP Lovecraft , but was primarily shaped by Evers' own style. In technical terms, the power play highlighted the game's automapping feature. The ASM praised parser, graphics and ease of use and drew it from the title of "ASM-hit". The magazine criticized the music, described the story as unoriginal and pointed out that the game principle of text adventures was out of date at the time of publication.
When the Amiga Joker magazine voted for Game of the Year 1992 , Hexuma was voted the third best adventure game.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Klaus Trafford: The Unheimliche Reise . In: ASM . November 1992, p. 48.
- ↑ a b Amiga Joker special issue 4, p. 21: Hexuma. Retrieved January 27, 2017 .
- ↑ a b Power Play: clay, stones, shards. Retrieved January 27, 2017 .
