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Obscure adventure game discussion thread

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The Caveworld Saga: The Shining Crystal (Die Höhlenwelt Saga: Der Leuchtende Kristall) (Ger) (Proline Software, Weltenschmiede) (1994) (DOS)

This is a German language 3rd person point and click game that takes place in a mixed Sci-Fi/Fantasy world. On the one hand you’ve got spaceships and laser guns, and on the other the inhabitants of the planet fly around on dragons. Unfortunately, this game is not very conducive to playing if you don’t understand German and as a result I found it a rather frustrating experience.

There’s a fair amount of dialogue and wrong answers can get you killed or imprisoned. A failure to navigate through certain parts of those trees will also bring your game to a standstill due to the game’s events being intrinsically tied to them. Items necessary to progress simply won’t appear until you get the right dialogue option. I recall one dialogue in the game that had a tree that was over 20 layers deep. I play lots of games where I have to brute force dialogue trees due to not understanding the language, but this one was a bit much for me. It’s not the game’s fault of course, but it is what it is. Despite the language barrier, I really don’t think this was a very good game though. It seemed pretty mediocre throughout.

One thing I’d like to touch on is a really annoying mechanic involving your mode of transport in the game. At one point you tame a dragon and use it to get around, however every time you go to a city you have to click through a 2-3 layer dialogue tree with a stable master to get him to watch your dragon and then when you leave you have to do it again and then take money out of your inventory to pay him. The game has a lot of unnecessary inventory clutter which means you pretty much always have to scroll through it all to get to your cash, which is always at the beginning of the list. It’s a tedious chore which does nothing but detract from the game.

I believe it was Hitchcock who said something like “Drama is life with the dull bits cut out”,  a quote that many a game developer really needs to understand. One should never interrupt a frantic manhunt to catch a crazed serial killer in order to bake cookies (Still Life), nor should I have to deal with the equivalent of parking lot attendants in a game that requires a bunch of backtracking.

The game was played in DOSBox without any problems. Well, I’ve babbled enough. Here are some shots from the game:

     
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Caxy Skunk Meets the Monsters (Caxy Gambá Encontra o Monstruário) (Por) (44 Bico Largo) (2000) (WIN)

This is a 3rd person cartoon comedy game from Brazil with a horror theme. The language wasn’t as much of an issue for me in this game as I understand Spanish and Portuguese is often similar enough for me to figure out the basic gist of things and the occasional use of machine translation was good enough for the rest.

Anyway, you play the role of an anthropomorphic skunk named Caxy who has car troubles while driving out in the country and is forced to enter a spooky house to seek help. The house happens to be inhabited by creatures from many classic horror films such as Frankenstein’s monster and his bride, the mummy, the wolfman, Quasimodo, the phantom of the opera, Dracula, et al. Brazil’s Coffin Joe plays a prominent role in the game as well.

This is one of those games whose primary purpose is to kill the player in as many humorous and occasionally gruesome ways as possible, often without any warning. You have seven lives before the game is over, but with the ability to save pretty much whenever you want, you’ll only ever lose the game if you actually want to.

Generally speaking, each room contains a monster who guards an item you’ll need to progress and will jump out at you when you try to take it. At which point you really only have two options; to talk to them and try and find the proper things to say so they won’t kill you, or to try and use the proper item on them to defeat them if you have it. A failure at either of those will result in death. The puzzles aren’t at all difficult if you are familiar with the films, but if you aren’t there is a book in the game which describes the monsters and gives hints as to how to defeat them. The game also features film footage from many classic horror films.

One interesting thing about the game is that each game is randomized at start. The areas you have access to and the placement of inventory items differs each time you play. The puzzles are always the same though.

Although I did get stuck pretty bad at one point due to pixel hunting, I have to say that, overall, I enjoyed this game.

I played this game in a VirtualBox Windows 98 SE virtual machine.

     
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Shining Flower (光る花 (Hikaru Hana)) (Maze) (1993) (MAC)

This is a short 3rd person Japanese game for the Macintosh that is basically just an interactive picture book. It can be played by anyone as it has no text or spoken language, or, to be more precise, the little amount of text it has is in a made-up language. The game simply starts out with your character finding the eponymous shining flower and then wandering around the world with it and interacting with a bunch of strange creatures. It’s like an early walking simulator. It’s about enjoying the atmosphere and experience and doesn’t have any real challenges.

I played the game in Mac OS 9 with the emulator SheepShaver without any problems.

     
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Just to let you know, these mini-reviews are pretty fascinating to read, thanks for putting them out here. The Caxy Skunk Meet the Monsters looks like something I’d enjoy myself(as there were a few others) Is that a game collection you already own and playing through or are you getting new (old) games on the regular basis from somewhere?

     
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DCast - 14 July 2020 02:51 PM

Just to let you know, these mini-reviews are pretty fascinating to read, thanks for putting them out here. The Caxy Skunk Meet the Monsters looks like something I’d enjoy myself(as there were a few others) Is that a game collection you already own and playing through or are you getting new (old) games on the regular basis from somewhere?

It depends on the game. Some I own. Others I downloaded from abandonware sites. It depends on how easy it is to get a copy and how much it costs.

When it comes to obscure/rare games I highly recommend trying before you buy because there are few things worse than paying an arm and a leg for some game only to find out it totally sucks, and other people’s opinions (mine included) are rather poor guidance in that respect. I’ve been burned way too many times that way. I would absolutely buy the Caxy Gambá game if I ever saw it for sale at a decent price, but I highly doubt I will ever have that opportunity.

And speaking of rare games and exorbitant prices, you should check out this auction on eBay .

I’m tempted to make them an offer of $10 just to be snarky.

     
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D - 16 July 2020 03:05 PM

And speaking of rare games and exorbitant prices, you should check out this auction on eBay .

Wow! US $14,995.95 is absolutely crazy. At that price you’d expect the shipping to be free, but the seller has the bloody nerve to charge $250. I have a copy of this rare but mediocre puzzle game in mint condition (the cut scenes are nice), maybe I should put it on ebay for $1000 as a kind of preemptive strike. Innocent

I’m tempted to make them an offer of $10 just to be snarky.

LOL, please do.

     

See you around, wolf. Nerissa

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First time i hear of this Batman point-and-click adventure back in the ‘90, anyone played it?

     

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D - thanks for taking the time to post these mini reviews along with lots of screenshots.  I always find the weird & obscure quite compelling! 

That ebay seller is clearly delusional ha ha ha.  WTF?!?

     

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Oh snap!  Took me until now to realize you were talking about Höhlenwelt saga for that one game!  Yes, I see now you clearly typed the German name LOL.  I tracked down a copy of that game a long time ago along with some other German only adventure games.  My thought was I would learn German and thus enjoy a whole new world of adventure genre since there are 100s of German only adventure games out there.  Sadly I suck at language, and thus did not get far in this game at all.  I tracked down a funny youtube walkthrough of it though (is that you?).  Damn that game is unforgiving as heck!  NO way would I have gotten to the end.

     
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DCast - 14 July 2020 02:51 PM

these mini-reviews are pretty fascinating to read, thanks for putting them out here.

My thoughts exactly. Thanks once again B D!

     

Everybody wants to be Cary Grant.
Even Me.

-Cary Grant

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Advie - 17 July 2020 12:44 PM

First time i hear of this Batman point-and-click adventure back in the ‘90, anyone played it?

I tried that years back. Now thanks to that video I finally know how I should have played it, as I never got beyond those fight scenes. Beyond not really getting far with it, I do recall it as somewhat of a technically clunky game. Not really the best Konami effort.

 

     
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D - 16 July 2020 03:05 PM

And speaking of rare games and exorbitant prices, you should check out this auction on eBay .

I’m tempted to make them an offer of $10 just to be snarky.

I’m tempted to drive up there (it’s about two hours away from where I live) and ask what’s his/her problem just to be EXTRA snarky.

     
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Ankh 1: The Mystery of the Pyramid (アンク ~ピラミッドの謎~ (Ankh: Pyramid no Nazo)) (Jap) (Ibis) (1995) (WIN)

This has no relationship whatsoever to the series of cartoon games of the same series name developed by Deck 13 Interactive. It’s the first of a trilogy of Egyptian themed edutainment adventure games from Japan made in concert with Egyptologist Sakuji Yoshimura.

The game is first person and uses a combination of FMV, photographic backgrounds and pre-rendered 3D for its presentation. Unlike some of the most recent Japanese games I’ve talked about this is a true adventure game in that it actually has various types of puzzles you need to solve to progress and like pretty much all Egyptian-themed games has a story involving the supernatural and encounters with various Egyptian deities.

Honestly, I’m just too distracted at the moment to think of anything else to say so I’ll just post a bunch of screenshots…

You start the game in a hotel room:

Having a conversation with Sakuji:

One of the places you can visit in Cairo:

When you’re ready, he’ll take you to the pyramids:

Viewing King Tut’s mask at the museum:

Belly dancing at a place called “The Pharaohs”

Chillin’ with Osiris:

A clue based maze to navigate:

Bad doggy!

     

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The Ankh trilogy sounds pretty cool!  Yet another series I had not heard of until now.  On a scale of 1-10, how playable would you say it is for non Japanese readers/speakers?

     
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lakerz - 23 July 2020 03:21 AM

The Ankh trilogy sounds pretty cool!  Yet another series I had not heard of until now.  On a scale of 1-10, how playable would you say it is for non Japanese readers/speakers?

     

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