Main game
3.00 average rating based on 2 ratings
So many contemporary reviews got mad that it is gory/violent... and that you could kill innocent villagers... lol if only they knew what was to come in gaming culture
Look: 7/10 Pretty bland, but a classic early computer game vibe that even gave me early 90s DOS feels. It's functional, but I definitely wish it had been more special so I could have boosted the game higher and maybe pushed through it. The UI and "world map" are particularly good. Otherwise, just functional despite the epic concept (and perhaps, due to the epic concept and limitations of the time)
Play: 7/10 King's Quest style blend of arcade action navigation and text command/parser concept. It took me a really long time to figure out how to change Command Selected and to use the Command Selected (still not entirely sure how to explain it, but the basic idea is hold the trigger button and press up to change the Command Selected, then seemingly keep holding the trigger button and click direction toward what you want to use or eat or examine etc). The collision masks are clunky but it's a well-playing action-adventure that's certainly more well-crafted and better-controlled than most its contemporaries! …
So many contemporary reviews got mad that it is gory/violent... and that you could kill innocent villagers... lol if only they knew what was to come in gaming culture
Look: 7/10 Pretty bland, but a classic early computer game vibe that even gave me early 90s DOS feels. It's functional, but I definitely wish it had been more special so I could have boosted the game higher and maybe pushed through it. The UI and "world map" are particularly good. Otherwise, just functional despite the epic concept (and perhaps, due to the epic concept and limitations of the time)
Play: 7/10 King's Quest style blend of arcade action navigation and text command/parser concept. It took me a really long time to figure out how to change Command Selected and to use the Command Selected (still not entirely sure how to explain it, but the basic idea is hold the trigger button and press up to change the Command Selected, then seemingly keep holding the trigger button and click direction toward what you want to use or eat or examine etc). The collision masks are clunky but it's a well-playing action-adventure that's certainly more well-crafted and better-controlled than most its contemporaries!
Feel: 8/10
Ahhhh, now I see why it was loathed for its violence and gore: you can kill cops, you have to kill people (I thought you had a choice lol) in order to achieve the goal of the game, and yea that was probly risque lol. If only there were music for the game, maybe they would have better understood the character's evil intentions :-p (and at least the creator had a good reason for not including music :-p see my status update). I love that you get info from the Library, otherwise it's quite vague what you need to do (and I could not find the manual/instructions online). Of course, it helped I had a guide to reference and definitely abused that cop exploit :-p Ooooo I love the RPG-esque "leveling up" vibe by reading the
Attachment: 7/10 Lol I love the guide's summary of the main steps of the game:
From here, you must murder people, bring them to your lab and build your body. However, you can't just go around knocking people out left and right without the village getting suspicious, so this is a problem.
Again, I guess I see why people were upset by its premise. It got tedious for sure when bringing the bodies back, but very impressive how the town judges you, how the NPCs have their own sort of AI that can change the game quite a bit, how expansive the map is despite the creator's limitations, how clever the gameplay and concept are in general. I did not end up finishing it, dying right before my last body, and it's a bad sign that I'm not willing to try again. Still, this was very memorable, very unique, and technically well-done--even if a bit tedious. A great Sound or Look would have probly made me push through!
Completion: Brought 4 Bodies back to my Lab Playtime: ~50 mins
From the creator "Wow - amazing to see people out there that still remember this! I wrote it ... between 1982 and 1984 I suppose, working for Thorn EMI Creative Sparks in Wardour Street, Soho, London. They closed us down in 1984 and I finished it months later working from home. Yeah, sorry no music! They weren't going to pay me extra for music, and to be honest I'd used up all the 64K RAM with the graphics by the end so there wasn't any room left for it :) Ahh - those were the days, hand coded 6502 assember, developed on a PET with twin floppy drives and a C64 with a plug-in debugger/monitor dongle on the expansion interface. The idea came from me being bored with platform games, loving the old Frankenstein movies and Hammer Horror films and trying to thing of a game that just let you do what ever you wanted and using crude sort of AI things would react to you! Glad to hear people out there liked it!"