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PURE FICTION * £24.99 Keyboard

Demoniak has arrived. This is not good news. This Demoniak chap you see, is a large demon from a parallel universe, who enjoys enslaving entire planets. Normal future mythology would have mankind’s shiny space fleets whizing out and bombing the beast. Mankind’s state however, in this future view, bears sad similarities to present day. The world is in a mess and we couldn’t organise a round of drinks in a distillery, let alone a galactic strike force. Thus, world-saving is left in the hands of private enterprise.

Luckily one man has his act together, a certain Doc Cortex, the cleverest man in the entire universe. He calls together a band of costumed misfits (known as superheroes) to help him build the ultimate bomb, the only thing that can stop Demoniak.

Wot no sprites?
Demoniak marks a brave departure for Palace/Pure Fiction, as it is a text adventure. Popular in the early days of computing the format has been largely forgotten since the 16-bits made it big, because these machines allowed glorious pictures and sounds while adventuring, why be satisfied with mere text?

In Demoniak the descriptions and story rattles across the main games screen, while you interrupt the game interjecting actions for the characters you currently control by entering text commands.

Traditionally, there would have been no choice of the charater you contrl but in Demoniak, it can be any of 50 characters, who all have a different view of events. So during the game you’re leaping around a galaxy of planets and personas, aiding the gang of five (Doc Cortex, Sondra the psychic, Flame the fire girl, Sirius the muscle and Madlok the magician) in their quest.

Psychological problems
The worlds the team visit are crazy places and a black, nihilistic humour pervades the while game. Each of the 50 characters you can become has psychological problems that loom large just when you need it least.

To achieve free movement, you need to appreciate the games amusingly warped perspective. Then it becomes clear how to encourage folk to do stuff their predetermined character would never dream of.

The 50 peeps on offer all have defined characteristics and objectives, so the curious will have great fun becoming periphery players and pushing the Demoniak universe to its logically mad conclusion. The mind-reader Sondra is fun, because her psychic abilities let you ‘watch’ the thoughts of the person she’s talking to.

No escape
Despite the new concepts added to the formula, Demoniak is unable to escape its text adventure roots. The logic ‘parser’ (text/game interface) is more intelligent than your average textural bash, allowing compound sentences and short-cut commands.

You are still forced, though, to master the syntax system to succeed and annoyance is inevitable as this process runs its course. Tying the wrong commands earn a "you don not need to use the word …" and a vicious circle of hurried frustrated key bashing commences.

The limitations of the text adventure mode cannot be held against Demoniak, as it forces the form and frees it considerably from previous constraints. Thrills are few, excitement sparse but the challenge of a 50-way logical puzzle – 49 more than usual – is intriguing!

Refreshingly, the combat is particularly flexible and reasonably tense. You can even become your enemy and mess with their happy fighting thoughts. Despite these saving graces Demoniak will only appeal to those who enjoyed the works of Infocom and Magnetic Scrolls.

Further developments are promised by the Pure Fiction system, as it evolves and throws off its text-only chains. Demoniak is good but is limited by its chosen form.


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Die großen Tage von Infocom sind längst Geschichte - wer heute ein Textadventure it nur etwa zehn Bildern an den User bringen will, hat's schwer. Aber Palace zeigt Courage und setzt voll auf Komplexität und einen ausgefuchsten Parser. Ob die Rechnung aufgeht?

Warum man hier in die Tasten hauen soll, erzählt das Intro in hübsch animierten Bildern: Aus den tiefsten Tiefen des Alls ist der Schurke Demoniak aufgetaucht, um unser Universum zu unterjochen. Und weil er es eilig hat, sprengt der Kerl kurzerhand ein Loch in den Sternenhimmel, aus dem seine beutegierigen Schergen über die Milchstraße herfallen.

Aber die Rettung naht, und zwar in Form der Wissenschaftlers Doc Cortex. Mit hilfe einer magischen Bombe will der weise Mann das Loch wieder zu kleistern, nur leider ist das Bömbchen in drei Teil zersprungen, die erst zusammengesucht werden müssen.

Zur Erledigung der edlen Aufgabe schlüpft man in die Rollen von vier wackeren Helfershelfern; als da wären: Johnny Sirius, der Zauberer Madlock, Flame, die menschliche Fackel, und Sondra, eine begabte Gedankenleserin.

Im Verlauf des Abenteuers wechselt man des öfteren zwischen diesen Charakteren hin und her, man kann das Geschehen aber auch aus der Sicht anderer Personen betrachten, die die Welt von Demoniak bevölkern. Je nachdem, in wessen Haut man gerade steckt, sind tie Textausgaben dann ein bißchen anders.

Apropos Text: Man sollte schon recht gut englisch können, um Spaß an diesem Game zu finden, denn viele der vorkommenden Vokabeln dürften kaum auf den üblichen Schulplänen zu finden sein (eine deutsche Version ist leider nicht geplant).

Der Parser gibt sich jedoch ausgesprochen verständig, lange Schachtelsätze werden ebenso akzeptiert wie Abkürzungen. Da aber selbst der beste Parser nicht alles kapiert, findet man in der Anleitung eine Liste aller wichtigen Verben und Eingaben.

Auch der Screenaufbau ist erfreulich übersichtlich ausgefallen: Infos wie Ort, momentane Identität und die Anzahl der bereits gemachten Eingaben werden angezeigt; teilweise sogar farblich hervorgehoben. Und wenn Sondra die Gedanken eines Charakters liest, so bekommt man sie in einem zusätzlichen Textfenster zu sehen.

Daß sich aus dem originellen Feature, fast jederzeit eine andere Spielfigur übernehmen zu können, nahezu unendlich viele Möglichkeiten für knackige Rätsel auftun, liegt auf der Hand, Tatsächlich werden alte Infocom-Füchse mit Demoniak auch viel Freude haben, Einsteiger oder Grafik-Fetischisten sind aber bei Sierra- oder Lucasfilm-Games allemal besser aufgehoben – erstens werden hier nur erfahrene Experten Land sehen, und zweitens sind die Illustrationen zwar recht hübsch, aber halt sehr, sehr spärlich.

Da sich auch der Sound auf eine kleine Titelmelodie beschränkt, wird dieses stimmungsvolle Adventure wohl trotz seiner Komplexität kaum eine breite Anhängerschar finden. Eigentlich schade… (C. Borgmeier)



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Erm, yes, I suppose we’d better admit to first things first. This is a text adventure. Not a sexy Delphine-style adventure with lots of graphics, the occasional arcade sequence and a friendly pull-down menu parser, but your standard old fashioned text adventure with the occasional still screen, lots of writing and, erm, that’s about it.

Almost ludicrous to expect anyone to pay this sort of premium price for it then, isn’t it? Well, yes. And then again no. You see, Demoniak, in its own quiet little way, is actually rather innovative.

It’s been written by a proper writer for a start – Alan Grant, a mainstay of 2000AD who’s handled Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog and others, as well as achieved considerable success in the States with his version of Batman.

Grant has thrown in the sort of grotesque, darkly humorous sci-ci/superhero plot readers of his comics would expect, had a good deal of fun with his grossly exaggerated characters and – yes! - actually written some text that’s fun to read. Witty, surprising, it’s almost an adventure game first.

Grant’s only partly the star of Demoniak though. The other is Palace’s new Pure Fiction adventure system, which features what appears to be a very clever parser indeed. As the adventure unfolds it allows you to switch between the main characters (a sort of constantly bickering and mutually suspicious superhero group of the future) and see things from slightly different perspectives – one character will take particular note of a hunky, half alien superhero’s laser gun, for instance, while another will be more concerned with his ‘tight, oh so tight’ jump suit.

It’s played for laughs, yes, but these different perspectives actually have some bearing on the way the game develops. Certainly, if one of your characters is rude to or snubs another one early in the game, it’ll be held against you and you’ll find the ijred party far less interested in helping you out later on.

Backed up by intro sequences and the occasional still screen in an impressively comic book style (new artist Jo Walker looks like a name to watch) Demoniak deserves to do well. It has to be said though that it is still saddled with lots of text only adventure type problems – the fact that you can find yourself stuck trying to open a certain door for ages, the problems with vocabulary it’ll understand – as well as that (what seems to me at least0 rather optimistic price.

The next Pure Fiction game will apparently be a very different beast indeed, with a lot more done in terms of graphics, but in the meantime here’s an interesting text adventure, well thought out and well written. Whatever next?


ALAN GRANT

Photo of Alan Grant, scriptwriter of the game Demoniak

Alan Grant writes comics - he worked on Judge Dredd for years (often sharing writing duties with the strip's creator John Wagner) as well as many of the other famous 2000AD characters. Currently he's working on Batman for DC in America, a new UK comics project called Toxic, and has a number of other fires - one of which is this new departure, a text adventure game called Demoniak.

How did you get involved with this project then Alan?
  Palace contacted me through a friend of a friend - they had this new adventure game system idea and they wanted someone who could bring a fresh approach to a game, perhaps someone from the world of comics. They knew my material already, they'd seen Batman, Judge Dredd and so on.

And how did you respond?
  I was very happy to do it. I'd already been involved in computer games in a different way, doing a strip called Computer Warrior for the revived Eagle. The stories were based on the plots of computer games but both John Wagner and myself didn't like playing them so we got someone else to do it and then tell us what the stories were about. I like simple arcade games like Space Invaders or Centipede but I can't handle complicated ones because I'm basically computer illiterate.

How did you go about creating the game?
  They got me to come up with the characters first and the basic scenario, then we got together - the Palace people myself and the programmer - at the Palace offices in London and hammered it out. I did a more detailed synopsis and they explained what we could and couldn't do. Then every so often over a period of about a year we'd meet some more and see how it was coming on. It seemed like a very long time scale to me - I'm used to people wanting comic stories really fast.

From what you've seen do you think it's been a success?
  Well, I haven't actually seen the finishing thing yet, but I liked the way the last version I saw was going. I have to admit that I'll probably never play it when I do get a copy, but I'll look forward to just owning one anyway. And yes, I'd be quite interested in doing another one, but we'll have to see how this one does first. After all, it might bomb out. █



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For those of you who thought the text adventure dead and buried, think again. Palace Software have radically revamped the genre for today’s retrogames fed up with 3D blasters, inane puzzlers and tedious platform romps.

Demoniak is both a text adventure and simulation. While most adventure games follow a linear storyline with various puzzles to solve along the way, Demoniak attempts to simulate a ‘game-world’ populated by independent characters that continually interact with the player or each other, both on and off-screen.

While you’re controlling one character, over fify other individual characters will carry on their lives in other game locations. Even if the player is on one world two characters may be having a fight to the death on another.

Despite a marvelously-entertaining manual which features small blogs of all the main characters, the game itself is rather less fun. The parser is, at best, merely adequate and often frustrating in the small number of commands it will accept. The unfolding story lacks the sharp and sophisticated humour of some of the recently-re-released budget Infocom titles such as Hitchhikers and Leather Goddesses.

And much of the text is excessively repetitive, annoyingly so if the computer is allowed to continue the game for a few moves by itself. Many of the fight scenes drag on interminably, with every parry and thrust detailed in laboured English.

Demoniak does offer some distinct advantages over other text adventures, not least the ability to become other characters during the game. In all, there are more than fifty characters on the loose, and it is possible to become almost any of them at any time. This allows you the freedom to planet hop around the galaxy and become enmeshed in events which have nothing to do with the overall plot of the game.

It’s a novel approach and means that if you get stuck with one character, or even killed, you can continue on your quest with another. One of the four superheroes, Sondra, also has the ability to read minds which offers an interesting slant on things – it’s even possible to read the mind of an enemy when locked in mortal combat with them!

Although there’s no in-game sound, there are a number of graphic screens at various points in the game and a meaty intro sequence. Ultimately, however, Demoniak is uninspiring. The forced humour becomes irritating after a while and the plot banal. An exceptionally average text adventure.


TO SAVE A UNIVERSE

The game boasts a futuristic sci-fi scenario concocted by comics legend, Alan Grant. An evil and twisted anti-god from another universe is intent on breaking free from his cosmic-shackles and bringing his evil pestilence to bear on another universe, namely ours! In his way stands the mental marvel, Doc Cortex, and a band of four bizarre superheroes called together at the Doc's request. Their mission is deadly and fraught with humour, as they attempt to find the missing parts to the Ultimate Bomb and use it to blow up the inten-dimensional porthole through which Demoniak's alien legions are set to enter our universe. Taking the role of Johnny Sirius, who's all muscle and little brain, it's up to you to guide the team across the galaxy in search of the missing bomb components. On your journey you'll encounter a warrior ape, an alien shapeshifter who uses the form of a beautiful woman to lure his victims to their death, a titanium-hardened war droid with a personality based on John Wayne, and many, many more.



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Mike Gerrard reckons that adventure games can be fun. So we locked him in a darkened room with Demoniak, called for the little men in the white coats, and waited...

For a text adventure, Demoniak has a very graphic introduction, including a lovely shot of an alien-type monster whose tongue flicks out and licks the eye-socket of a skull. Well, it’s lovely if you like that kind of thing. Make the most of the pulsating pixels, though, as the game itself is a wordy one with only the occasional piccie popping up now and again. The graphics have a chunky comic-book look, which makes sense as the game is written by Alan ‘Judge Dredd’ Grant.

The time is 2090 AD, the place is Earth, and you are Jonny Sirius. Whaddya mean, you cannot be Sirius?! In Demoniak you don’t have to be. You needn’t stay as one character. You can BECOME any of the other characters in the game – and I mean any of them. Not just the main ones, but incidental characters too, and it’s great fun switching around. Get attacked by a nasty and you can become that nasty and get it to sink its teeth into someone else.

To start off, the plot of the game is told by Doc Cortex, who welcomes you to his lab and explains why he’s asked you to come. Earth is threatened,. A gateway has been created into our universe through a black hole, and the hordes of Demoniak are invading and threatening life as we know it.

The only way to stop the invasion is to blast the gateway with the Ultimate Bomb, the components for which are known only to Doc Cortex. You have to help him find them, which involves visiting the planets of Fundamenta and Freezyassov.

As you can see, some of the humour in Demoniak is a bit obvious, really. But a lot of it is more subtle than that, and there’s more than a hint of the Hitchhikers about it. Like the description in Cortex’s lab: "If there is any scientific equipment here, it is beyond both your conception and perception".

The descriptions also change according to which character you’re playing. If you’re the red-haired character Flame (a kind of cross between the Human Torch and Kim Basinger) and you decide to examine Johnny Sirius, you get a slavering description of how "he has everything a man should have and plenty to spare besides." (Oo-er. Ed.)

Doc, Jonny, Madlok, Flame and one other character, Sondra, are the main gang, and they set off to their first destination in the human spaceship. Proteus (which you can talk to, if you like!) In fact, this adventure has a better response to speech than any I’ve ever seen before, but the response to EXAMINE commands isn’t so hot.

Sondra on the left and the actions of the character she’s mind reading on the right. The characters don’t need to be in the same location, and if they are you can even MINDREAD someone who’s attacking you and see the fight from both sides (the game has RPG elements too).

In fact the game’s got so much that’s new in the adventure style that you spend ages exploring these features rather than etting on with the quest. This should make it appeal to those who don’t fancy conventional text adventures because they think they’re just a series of impossible puzzles.

The emphasis in Demoniak is strictly on fun. The manual gives you suggestions of jolly japes to try, like switching on Flames BURN and then trying to BURN ALL, or getting Madlok to CAST ALL SPELLS at once. It’s a great text adventure for people who don’t really like text adventures… and those that do like them will love it all the more. Stop