Perihelion: The Prophecy (Amiga)

That is an awesome looking title screen, but they've kind of spoiled it with that font in my opinion. It could have looked so much nicer without the dangling curved bits.

Perihelion can be downloaded from the creator's website for free, and it even comes with a preconfigured copy of Amiga emulator WinUAE to play it on.

Wow, okay that's... different.

I see they're going with an orange/grey colour scheme for this game then.

If the game disks actually looked like that I wouldn't want them anywhere near my disk drives.

I love it when messages like this pop up in a game. Turn down the brightness on your Amiga monitor and push the volume on your hi-fi to 11, because shit's about to get serious.

And then the intro turns out to be a guy reading out a letter in a low growl that I can barely understand. I guess now I know why they asked me to turn the volume up.

Oh hang on, something's happening now. A spaceship flies past the screen towards the tower in the distance.

The lone occupant steps into the tower as dramatic music blares out in the background. And then he probably trips over one of those beams running across the floor. I guess 'practical' wasn't high up in the list of priorities when they were building this place.

Some extreme dramatic elevator action.

Finally the tired messenger reaches the base commander and tells him the situation. Bad, bad things are going on in the world, and it's time to awaken six rpg heroes from their century-long slumber to save the day.

The button is pressed, and Project Awakening begins.

And then I'm left looking at this screen. It's as awesome looking as it is cryptic.

Fortunately it gives me info for each button as I hover over them, or else I'd be totally lost instead of just mostly lost.

This is apparently the character creation screen. I set up my team of six characters, giving each of them a different race and class. From human knight to feline khymera anchorite, whatever the hell that is.

Damn this is a nice looking game. I love the style of it.

This is apparently the spell making page, where I can set up some magic for my psionic character to use. It seems that I have to put together a series of up to four components, such as 'love', 'fear' and 'remorse', and if I choose a correct combination then I get the spell. I didn't choose a correct combination.

To be fair, the manual does list all the combinations, but if the game's gonna be awkward about it then so am I. I'll see what happens if I start off without any magic.

Damn, do you think they added enough stats there? There's three more pages full of character information like this for each character. And it's all meaningless to me right now.

Like, for all I know with his 11% resistance to extreme light, this poor guy's going to explode if he's exposed to direct sunlight.

Onto the world map. I can move my little metal dot around anywhere on the map with the arrows, but I have no idea where to go.

Oh wait, the scrolling message says to 'check the lost file-entry on my NetStation.' Sounds simple enough, if I can find the button to bring the thing up.

Hey, I have to type commands into the NetStation manually! And I don't know any commands!

Ah, 'help' did the trick. There's only one file on my network, and it seems I have to type 'read' then the filename to access it.

Right. I have to go to MidLight and get the encrypted NetCode. Simple.

First thing I need to do is figure out where the hell MidLight is.



LATER.

It wasn't too hard to find this place to be honest. It was the closest location to the starting point.

The outside world looks like a wreck, but this place seems to be doing all right. They've got the lights on at least.

The quaint city streets of MidLight. I was kind of hoping to be given another hint to be honest, but the game's just abandoned me here with no clue how I'm supposed to find this 'NetCode', or even what to look for.

It seems I steer my character around the streets by clicking on the compass arrows. Each step flicks the view to a different picture as I move around.


MINUTES OF AIMLESS WANDERING LATER.

If this is main street then where are all the bloody people? This place is entirely empty, there's nothing here at all. No shops, no people, no enemies, no doors, and definitely no 'NetCode'.


EVEN MORE WANDERING LATER.

A door! And the network detector's flashing! This must be where I'm meant to be.

Awesome, I can use this place to connect to the network and find out my next objective.

... what?

I don't HAVE the NetCode, I was told to come here to get the NetCode!

Okay fine, there's no way I'm going to quit this early so I'm going to look up online what I was supposed to do.

Hmm, it seems I was supposed to bump into someone who gives me the code 'PSYCHO' to use.

I logged in with the NetCode 'PSYCHO' and found four files on the network. The first two gave me an access denied message, but this one mentions a secret message encoded into a child's mind.

So all I've got to do now is wander the planet looking for a child.

At least I think I already have the necklace I need to decode the information.

I got some other codes from the internet to try, maybe the information there will give some clues where to go.

What the fuck? Logging onto computers and reading files costs me money? But I need to do that to progress through the game, and I haven't found any way to get extra cash so far.

For all I know I may have just lost the game right here.

Oh hang on, we have doughnut...

It turns out that it was just the owner coming into the room. For some reason that means I have to watch a spinning torus on screen for a couple of seconds.

For some reason the guy only responds to questions I type into my computer. I tried asking him about 'NetCode', and he gives me the crucial clue!

The crucial clue I needed ten minutes ago to access the computer in the first place that is.

Fuck it, I'm just going to go wandering the streets looking for a child.


MUCH WANDERING LATER.

Yes! Here you go kid, have an amulet to look at.

IT WORKED! The baby tells me a single word: ASYLUM. I race back to enter it into the computer, but the door to the network room has been locked. Also I didn't have any money left anyway. Damn.

Well what do I do now? Maybe I have to travel to a literal asylum.

And so the band of six heroes travelled the land from west to east in search of the next step in their epic quest. And they find fuck all.

Okay that was a stupid idea. Back to MidLight then.

This time I decided to give in and make a rough map of the city of MidLight so at least I know I'm not wandering in circles. I started at the green square, and eventually found myself at the orange square on the left... the locked network room.

Then I tried searching the eastern side of the city instead, eventually ending up at the red tile...

... where I find some guys are having a bit of a riot.

Whoa, there are battles in this game.

It seems I have to move my selected character so that he has a clear line of sight to the enemy, then I click the ranged attack button. Then the game selects the next character, and continue making moves until this guy's turn comes around again and I finally get to unleash his preselected attack. I guess it would be a good idea to move the white targeting cursor over the enemy character before finalising the attack though.

I can't tell which are my guys and which are the enemies on the map screen, but fortunately they're colour coded on the mini-map.

No, not the swarm of microscopic PATHOGENS! I imagine the expression on his face looks just like that face below the minimap right now.

There might be some smart gameplay hidden under here somewhere, but so far this battle system is not entertaining me. It doesn't help that this fight is taking forever.


TEN MINUTES LATER.

All my guys are getting slaughtered! This wasn't the plan. This wasn't the plan at all!

What a very '2001: A Space Odyssey' style game over screen. I guess space babies are a bad thing in this case though.


I don't know what to think about this to be honest. All the way through I felt like I was missing something really obvious, because I can't believe they actually intended players to just wander around blindly until they stumbled onto things like I did.

It's a shame though, because I really did want to like this one.