Whale's Voyage

Whale's Voyage is a computer role-playing game from the Austrian development studio neo Software . Whale's Voyage was released in 1993 and was programmed by Hannes Seifert and Niki Laber.

Whale's Voyage was initially released for the Commodore Amiga and a few months later also for the PC . A CD-ROM version was published for both systems towards the end of 1993 . In 1995 the successor Whale's Voyage II appeared for PC , Commodore Amiga and the CD³² . Both games were part of the 1996 PC compilation " Gold Games " by TopWare Interactive .

Game content

Whale's Voyage is a science fiction role-playing game set in the distant future. The place of the action is a solar system consisting of the six planets Lapis , Aroboris , Castra , Sky Boulevard , Nedax and Ionoid .

At the beginning, the player creates a group of four characters ( party ). The player determines the appearance and characteristics of a character as well as special abilities of a character according to the usual pattern. Then the actual game begins. The player is on board his spaceship, the eponymous Whale , which is in the orbit of Castra . This already shows that Whale's Voyage is not a conventional role-playing game, because on board the spaceship the game represents a trading simulation in the elite type , in which the player can earn money by transporting goods. The player uses this money to upgrade his spaceship, which in turn benefits further trading efforts, as the player can thus defend himself against attacking space pirates . The battles with the pirates are fought in a turn-based tactical simulation .

The actual role-playing part begins as soon as the player teleports their party onto the surface of a planet. There he soon meets NPCs who offer him various jobs for money. For example, the player should bring an artificial heart to Lapis on behalf of a dealer or help a citizen of Aroboris to find her house key. After fulfilling orders, character upgrades await the party.

Another part of the game appears as soon as the player has equipped his whale with a daughter space glider. With this plane it is possible to explore the surfaces of the planets. The glider is controlled similar to a shoot 'em up .

Although the stages of the game are different, they are always connected to one another, for example by assigning the player to transport goods to other planets. All in all, Whale's Voyage was a very innovative and varied role-playing game, which also offered an unusual space scenario.

technology

From a technical point of view, Whale's Voyage corresponded to the standard for role-playing games of the early 1990s. The graphics format on the PC was VGA graphics with a resolution of 320 × 240 pixels in 256 colors. The visits to the planetary surfaces were shown in a 3D window in which raster graphics figures acted. As already described, the glider sequences resembled a shoot 'em up . Most of the rest of the game consisted of bitmap menus.

Whale's Voyage was one of the first games to offer voice output . The rest of the selection of sound effects was rather spartan and functional.

The soundtrack was composed by Hannes Seifert himself and offered futuristic electronic melodies in a MIDI- like format. The CD version offered a bonus audio track that was playable on CD players and was held in a dance style.

reception

The Amiga version received good reviews at that time, especially from German-language magazines (e.g. the Amiga Joker ) and is now considered a classic of the genre. In the international arena, on the other hand, the reviewers were rather confused by the half-hearted balancing act between space trading simulation and SF role-playing game and judged the game rather ambiguous.

The PC version, released a little later, was rated well in memory of the Amiga original, but in retrospect it was quickly outstripped by games like Lands of Lore or Eye of the Beholder .

Web links

Collected reviews of the Amiga version ( Memento from January 31, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
Whale's Voyage at MobyGames (English)
Whale's Voyage datasheet at TheLegacy

Whale's Voyage 1 - Screenshots at oldgames

Whale's Voyage 2 - The overwhelming power - Screenshots at oldgames