Missed Classic 130 - Daughter of Serpents (1992) - Introduction

 Written by Vetinari

Daughter of Serpents is the second of the two games created by British developer Eldritch Games and based on the Cthulhu Mythos by H.P. Lovecraft, the first of which, The Hound of Shadow, was my first series of posts for this blog.

Chris Elliott and Richard Edwards are credited as authors also for Daughter as they were for Hound, but here they had contributions from at least six or seven other people, which may bode well for this game, at least in comparison to Hound where there were four persons credited in total.

The graphic compartment is the purview of Pete Lyon (as lead), with various additional graphics by Rob Chapman, Paul Dobson and Ben Levitt. From Wikipedia, I gather that Lyon visited Egypt before he started working on this game to ensure that all graphics were as realistic and accurate as possible. For example, the hotel background was based on a photograph of the Savoy as it was in 1920.

Keith Hook is credited as lead programmer, and the sounds and music are from no less than Richard Joseph who was one of the most consistent composers in 1990s videogaming, especially with the work that he did for Sensible Software.

He sadly passed away in 2007

One of his most iconic soundtracks (and one of my all-time favourites) is the one he did for Cannon Fodder, which, if you are not familiar with, I suggest you listen to. C'mon, go ahead and click on the link, I'll wait here.

So, back to this game. I will be playing the 1992 floppy disk release, but there is apparently a later version dated 1995 which came in CD-ROM and is known by a different name, i.e. “The Scroll”.

The cover art of the original is so much better. It is by Barbara Lofthouse btw.

I have a soft spot for this game (similar to Ween) because, even if it is not a masterpiece by any stretch, it is one of the few adventure games from the beginning of the 1990s which was available also in Italian.

I played it for the last time more than 30 years ago, so I don't remember much. But I remember one thing: this game is short. Make of this what you will.

We begin the adventure with a menu similar to the one which was also used in Hound, but in this case a soft and slightly disquieting Arabic-style music welcomes us.

As we already did in the previous game, we will start with character creation.

The graphics and leaps and bounds better than the ones in "Hound of Shadow"

After choosing our gender, as first thing we have a text description of our main characteristics (which we can reroll if we don't like), and again we can choose if we are a British or American national.

Then we go straight to choosing our main profession, for which there are six possibilities: Traveller, Egyptologist, Mystic, Occultist, Sleuth and Private Eye. These six professions are obviously designed to be coupled two by two and, strangely enough, the types of person which could be generated by these three couplings are very similar to the characters that I employed in my playthrough of “The Hound of Shadow”.

I cannot confirm nor deny the fact that my characters in the last game were chosen with exactly this in mind.

Each of the six professions is tied to a main characteristic (which is given to the character for free), and then it has four or five secondary skills to which points must be assigned.

Apparently the main characteristic of a sleuth is to be independently wealthy.

You can assign all points to the skills of your chosen profession, or split them by adding other templates (which costs you some skill points for each additional profession opened, but which otherwise works exactly the same). In my case I chose Sleuth as primary focus, with Private Eye as secondary.

Is the creature at the top a gargoyle? Mmmh, probably just a rat.

Each skill has also three different expertise “zones”: low (red), medium (orange) and high (yellow); before giving the okay to finalize the character skills you can see in which of these three zones your skill level falls into.

Then there is the recap screen with all your main characteristics, which you can agree to keep and so save the character file to the game directory, or discard. The character files themselves are written like dossiers from some “Chelmshouse Clinic for Mental Health”, which is a nice thematic touch.

Sven is back, baby!

So let's start the game proper.

Obviously there's a pyramid, even if the game is set more than 200 km away from them.

The introduction to the game, while the credits are rolling, shows a steamship which enters the port of Alexandria, in Egypt.

The monument in the background should be the Citadel of Qaitbay.

A man with a fez, wearing some glasses and carrying a doctor's bag or similar, descends the gangplank from the ship.

Does anyone know what SMR means?

Then suddenly a man handling two knives leaps out and strikes down the poor traveller without mercy!

The music is accordingly tense here.

But someone (most probably the Egyptian police) shoots the killer down.

And in the final scene, the dying man, before collapsing to the floor of the dock, transforms itself into an anthropomorphic serpent.

Spooky.

What a thrilling and action-packed introduction! What does all this have to do with us?

Absolutely nothing, since our adventure starts at the Savoy Hotel with our character having just arrived in town, not knowing anything at all about this incident and without us being involved in any way in the above-mentioned event.

It's like The Dagger of Amon Ra all over again.

The story begins with the hotel manager, Emil Gruber, giving us a letter.

The Savoy Hotel screens have a nice 1920s soundtrack.

The letter is from Bimbashi Colin Cameron, a high-ranking police officer in the Alexandria police, who has apparently been contacted by us before we arrived here. Cameron asks us to go meet him at his office at the El Gumruk Police Station, since there are some complications regarding the case which brought us to Egypt.

“Poste Restante” means the mail will be held until the recipient calls for it.

Before we continue, I want to spend some words on the interface.

In the various locations (which the game manual refer to as “Communication Screen” mode), the mouse cursor changes according to the point of interest; for example, on Emil Gruber it becomes a question mark, since you can “talk” to him, while on the stairs it becomes a pair of legs for “walk” to another screen. So far so good.

Our Inventory.

Clicking on the bottom right of the screen takes you to the “Inventory Screen”, where you can find all the objects that you have acquired during the game (right now this consists only in the letter from Cameron) and also three interesting things on the right.

The replacement for the “what do I know” command.

On the bottom are the game notes, which are updated automatically and which let you know what's going on with the plot and what you are supposed to do to advance it.

The map is scrollable.

At the top there is a map of Alexandria, which allows for fast travel to various locations, and as expected is updated with new places when you discover them (as, for example, the El Gumruk Police Station which we just learned about).

This is actually the game menu in disguise.

And in the middle is Cook's Guide to Alexandria, which apart from being a comprehensive directory of the game historical background and of various sundry information, also hides the fundamental “Essentials for your visit”, which is none other than the save/load/quit functionalities.

It goes on like this for several pages on each subject.

The last part of the interface is what the manual calls “Manipulation Screen”. In practice, you click on the bottom left of a location or at the left of the inventory screen, and you are taken to a different screen where the player can drop an item to “examine it in more detail and find out what they do”. Actually, this is what I already did before in order to read the letter (you have to drag it to the left side of the inventory screen and it will show its contents).

This so-called manipulation screen seems awfully similar to a carpet.

If you have no object to be dragged into this screen, the manipulation screen just shows the ground beneath your feet. I foresee that this will be important later on.

To use an item from your inventory on something or someone at your location, you take it from the inventory and then drag it to the main screen, where you can click with it on the spot where you want to use it.

Just from this brief recap, you can see that the interface is unnecessary clunky and not very user-friendly. This is also compounded by the fact that you have to click the right mouse button to advance the dialogues, instead of the left mouse button like in all normal games in the whole history of point-and-click adventures. Is this because the developers are British and so drive on the wrong side of the road? I don't know.

Talking of dialogues, sometimes when you have a choice, or maybe an option to further discuss a particular topic, the dialog bubble will have some highlighted words. In this case you have to click the left mouse button to select the word.

This will only happen later, so it is technically a spoiler.

I think that this will be enough for this post; next time we'll go exploring the city to see all of the beautiful sights and monuments of Alexandria! (not really)

Session Time: 0 hour 30 minutes

Total Time: 0 hour 30 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no CAPs will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. As this is an introduction post, it's an opportunity for readers to bet 10 CAPs (only if they already have them) that I won't be able to solve a puzzle without putting in an official Request for Assistance: remember to use ROT13 for betting. If you get it right, you will be rewarded with 50 CAPs in return. It's also your chance to predict what the final rating will be for the game. Voters can predict whatever score they want, regardless of whether someone else has already chosen it. All correct (or nearest) votes will go into a draw.