Jack in the Dark - Saving Christmas (Won and Final Rating!)

Written by Andy Panthro

The toy shop back room is where we begin the finale.

 How can one small child save Christmas? Well, this isn’t any small child, this is a witch! And if there’s any magic in this world, surely this is the time for it. Already we have defeated the dancing puppet, and the soldier toys are back in their toybox. This has allowed us access to the back room, and with that a whole new selection of items and toys to contend with.

Companions of Xanth – Crewel Lye: A Caustic Yarn

By Ilmari

Scorching desert, and all directions lead just to the same place. After a few futile attempts, Nada, my companion, identified the place as Void, one of the elemental regions in the northern Xanth. Despite what the name says, it’s not empty, but more like illusory – there’s nothing real there, but you can use the illusions as if they were real.

What was that? Did I see a door appearing and vanishing? I talked to Nada and she didn’t believe I saw anything. Talking to her enough, with sentences that indicated me believing in the door, made it reappear as solid.

Missed Classic 136: Jingle Bells (1986)

Written by Joe Pranevich

Merry Christmas! When I first started reviewing Christmas adventure games, eleven years ago, I thought that I’d have a lark for a year or three and then we’d be done with Christmas games as a genre. This is our twelfth one! (We covered two games last year.) When the holidays come around, I excitedly open Santa’s bag of presents– our secret spreadsheet with every Christmas game that we know about– and pulled the next game on the list.

The first one was Juleadventurespil, a Danish holiday game written in 1983 and distributed as a type-in. It would be one of our earliest Christmas games, but has the downside that I don’t speak Danish. I may try it another year, but I elected to pass for now.

The second was Gremlins, a 1985 Adventure International game based on the film of the same name. This was a tougher choice. Gremlins, like Die Hard, has a reputation of being a non-Christmas film that is set at Christmas. A review of screenshots show relatively little Christmas content in the actual game and it didn’t seem to be what I want to play when I seek Christmas joy. Plus, I’d have to watch the movie, which I have been actively avoiding since I was a kid. Perhaps next year. 

That leaves us with my third pick: Jingle Bells: A Sleigh Ride with Father Christmas, written in 1986. This was a commercial release for the ill-fated BBC Micro, written by a company better known (if known at all) for its educational software. I failed to get an emulator working, but thankfully a BBC Micro enthusiast website had one working online! Apologies if the fonts don’t look exactly right. 

Let’s get to some Christmas joy!

Jack in the Dark - A Nightmare Before Christmas

Written by Andy Panthro

You'd think a kid in a toy shop would be happy.

Previously, we had knocked on the door of this mysterious toy shop while trick-or-treating, and definitely got tricked ourselves. The door behind us is locked, and so we take charge of young Grace as we try and navigate our way through this curious place and find our way home.

The toys move around us, the eyes of a jack-o-lantern look down upon us. So much life and yet, we appear to be the only one here. Towards the back of the shop, two toy soldiers block a doorway. Towards the right hand side are the counter, and the displays in the window. Directly in front of us, a large open chest, which seems as good a place as any to begin.

Companions of Xanth – Roc and a Hard Place

By Ilmari

Last time, I had just arrived in the magical world of Xanth. Without any idea what I am supposed to do, I ask my companion Nada Naga for advice.

Ah, the good magician Humfrey. No trip to Xanth would be perfect without a visit to the Good Magician’s castle. Originally a human with no talents, but a lot of curiosity, he eventually enrolled in a demon university and earned a degree of a magician of information. After a long period as a king of Xanth, Humfrey retired into a castle, but people began coming up and asking him questions, since he knew so much. Eventually, he decided to ask anyone visiting him for a year’s service – even his future wife, Gorgon (yes, the one with snakes as her hair and a petrifying look), when she wanted to know if Humfrey would marry him. Relatively recently in Xanth history, Humfrey and his family went missing and the place of the magician of information had to be temporarily assumed by Grey Murphy, magician with the talent of magic nullification and the son of an evil magician Murphy (the famous one with the talent of making things go wrong, if they can go wrong). Humfrey was eventually found in the anteroom of Hell, where he had gone to ask the demon X(A/N)TH release her previous wife, Rose of Roogna, whom he had forgotten due to drinking a lot of forgetfulness potion after her disappearance. Eventually X(A/N)TH conceded, but also returned Humfrey’s all earlier wives (now up to five and half) back to the world of the living. Since Xanth allows only monogamous marriages, Humfrey’s wifes have to take turns in living with Humfrey, while others reside in Hell.

Sometimes the Xanth series seems like one big soap opera.

Game 153: Jack in the Dark (1993) - Introduction

Written by Andy Panthro

The mysterious toy shop.

On this Halloween night, a young child by the name of Grace Saunders (age 8) is lost in the big city. She chances upon an old toy shop, and after knocking, the door opens. Upon entering the door shuts behind her, trapping her in this strange place full of weird, wonderful and downright creepy toys.

Happy Halloween everyone! It’s time for…

What do you mean it’s December? What a strange turn of events!

A very brief introduction.

Yes, while this game is set on October 31st, it was released in December of 1993, as part of a promotion for Alone in the Dark 2. Even the opening image of the toyshop has a Christmas tree outside! So it’s only fitting then that I should play this now, in the run up to Christmas, and with Alone In the Dark 2 not too far off in the future (I guess I have my work cut out for me).

I briefly played this many years ago, but I don’t think I ever finished it. In a change from the usual Alone In The Dark games, this one has no combat, but rather is more of a traditional adventure game, albeit in 3D which was not yet common. This is packaged with Alone in the Dark 1 on GOG.com, and was available in the 90s as part of the CD releases of both AitD 1, and AitD 2.

The toy shop interior, with a menacing looking jack o’lantern in the upper right

I’ll keep this first entry quite short, as this is probably going to be a short adventure (I hope so, my time right now is a little limited!). Our character, Grace, is in the now-locked toyshop, and can wander about freely, with a few objects in view to take a look at. There are only “search” and “close” options available as actions for now, but this does change when you pick up new items. We’ll get into more of the story and themes of this little adventure next time, which get revealed upon searching the area.

So we leave our young character for now. She is alone (apart from the toys), and in the dark (apart from the lights of the toy shop)... Who can guess what the rating will be?

Hand of Fate - Final Rating

Written by Michael

Hand of Fate has proven to be a fun game to play for the blog.  I don’t remember if I ever finished it back in the day (lazy 15-year-old me might have used a walkthrough to see the end) but that’s more a reflection on me than the game.  The commenters predicted very high scores for this game, possibly even cracking the top ten list.  Getting to it, in my usual style, the first few categories are going to be very heavily worded.  You wouldn’t expect any less from me, right?

Companions of Xanth – Man from Mundania

By Ilmari

The plot device

In the deep end, then. I wonder what a complete newbie to the Xanth lore would understand about this discussion of two demonic figures with weird names. And what’s that Mundania they keep talking about?

Game 150: Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (1993) - Introduction

By Zenic Reverie

Soon...

What is the draw to horror? In the intro to Veil of Darkness, I mentioned that this kind of entertainment was not my cup of tea, at least at the time it was released. I enjoyed a good mystery and had some interest in supernatural fantasy, but gruesome and especially gory art turned me away. So, once again, I probably would have passed on this game if the box were the only thing to go by.

Hanging body? weird looking face? no thanks.

The back of the box promises something a little more in line with a thriller than outright horror. A story steeped in voodoo, a generational curse, and unnerving nightmares. It gets my mind racing with possibilities. How were the Shadow Hunters formed? Why do they exist? Are there others? Is the curse triggered by some recent or future event, or has he had these nightmares throughout his life? I guess there's only one way to find out.

Hand of Fate - Won!

Written by Michael

Were you scared I wouldn’t finish the game quick enough?

Last time, I had just landed Wile-E-Coyote style in the Petrified Forest.  And even if it didn’t say it at the bottom of the screen, I would know from the expressions on the faces of the trees.

They don’t know how I can get to the wheels of fate, but I suspect I need to take the path behind them to find it.  But they won’t budge.  So, I check out the Zanthia-shaped hole in the ground, and find one of my empty flasks.  There’s a pinecone on the ground near the trees, and I ask the trees if it belongs to them.  As I take it, they say they’ll make more.

Game 145: Companions of Xanth (1993) - Introduction

By Ilmari

I must have been twelve years old when I picked up a copy of Golem in the Gears from the library shelf. My motives were pretty clear: it looked like fantasy and it said so on the back, so I was bound to try it. It seemed hilarious at the time, with the hero of the story being essentially a man smaller than a frog, riding a monster under the bed.

I can still recount many of the more intriguing sections of the book. Take the time when the heroes were trapped by the evil machine called Com-Pewter (notice the pun?) and had to fight for their fate in a game reminiscent of old text adventures. You see, Com-Pewter could change the structure of its immediate reality with text prompts, and the heroes were supposed to enter their own prompts, with the goal of getting out of the lair in a set number of turns. Noting that Com-Pewter had countered their move of finding a safe passage without any dragons by introducing a dragoness, the heroes made a cunning plan. This time, they stated that they would find an exit with nothing dangerous in it and particularly no egrets, and when the Com-Pewter inevitably answered that there was an egress waiting for them, thinking it would be a mean female egret, the heroes could simply take the egress, which is just another word for exit. Besides, egrets are just harmless birds.

I think what finally sold me was the ending. I mean, how many fantasy books spend time explaining what the Prisoner’s Dilemma is all about and how to solve it?! Being those days an avid fan of the works of Douglas Adams and Monty Python, with their, let’s say, more refined type of humour, this seemed like more of the same kind.