A Matter of Time

SPAG
The writing is readable in its simplicity, but needs more imagination. The puzzles are straightforward item manipulation games which I couldn't work out; the games unresponsiveness and shaky parser didn't encourage me to do so. More synonyms are required; you can do "climb tree" but not "climb vines".

Graphics are varied and made with fractal and ray-tracing programs. This gives them a certain lack of liveliness and inconsistency of style. The sounds didn't add anything much to the game, although they served well to identify where I was. Good sound in the background could make each area of a landscape feel more distinct.
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SynTax
The mechanics of the game are a little strange: After each turn you get a summary of shortened commands (N)orth, (G)ive, (L)ook at, etc. A summary of commands directly available from the function keys F1 to F10 is also shown at this time and after a few turns, this gets quite irritating. At selected points in the story you get a multiple choice menu with a list of 2 or more courses of action you can embark upon. This system takes much away from the freedom of a traditional text adventure, and makes the player feel that he is simply being herded into the strict direction the author intended. A wrong move almost inevitably leads to death, usually sudden and without warning, a "feature" which will undoubtedly make most adventurers give up and pack it in after a few attempts.
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Average Rating:

Looks like somebody got a ray tracing program and was looking for a way to get some use out of it. Graphics involve the typical mirrored spheres and other geometrical shapes, along with some others--perhaps digitized photos. Not all of them are this cheesy, there is some well done stuff in here. Actually, though, the graphics get a little annoying past a certain point and hinder the game by breaking it up with lengthy load-time waits.

It looks like the plot is you are going back in time to rescue a murder suspect that is searching for the existence of God. You follow him back in time and end up encountering... Not much really. A forest, a cave, a waterfall, a dinosaur. After a few times of being eaten, and having to go through the intro with all of the slow-loading graphics, I called this one. Being that it is an "introductory adventure" meant to entice you to purchase the full version, I have a feeling I'm not missing too much. Still, it's not totally unworthy of a quick play-through.
CardinalSin.jpg

As a minor point of interest, this may be the first game in the post-Infocom era to not have a response to 'xyzzy'.

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