Reviewer: Nick Fenwick
In a second hand set of dimensions...
In a plane of reality that was never meant to fly...
A sinister plot is about to unfold.
This is the Discworld, a marvellous magical world created by the ubiquitous Terry Pratchett to the delight of his fans the world over. There has been a deluge of games of this ilk popping up over the last few years, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max, Simon the Sorcerer and the various Indiana Jones's to name but a few. The point-and-click interface has become commonplace, and if not already familiar to a game player it is intuitive and easy to pick up. It may have seemed that a Terry Pratchett game had to have been released eventually, but it wasn't as simple as many think. In fact, a game based on his books was planned some years ago, but the plan was scrapped due to "lack of demand". Well, demand has now grown as his books have become known by all, and Terry Pratchett is a household name. I for one am glad it has taken this long for a Discworld based game to hit the shelves, because before now, and modern technological advances, any game attempting such a style would have been a mere shadow compared to what Teeny Weeny Games have released on the unsuspecting public.
To those unfamiliar with the Discworld (do such people exist?) I offer this explanation. Imagine space, stretching on as far as the eye can see into an endless void. Now picture a turtle, not just a normal sea-side turtle that you might find on a TV nature program, but a massive, gargantuan beast thousands of miles long, paddling its way along an invisible path best known only to itself, its shell studded with asteroid marks and frosted with methane icing. Astride its back place four elephants, one to each corner, and resting atop their backs the Discworld itself. The Discworld is flat, circular and strangely pancake-like, its surface covered with seas and continents wherein dwell the inhabitants of the Disc. From the centre, or hub, of the Disc rises the majestic Cori Celeste, a massive pillar rising up into the stratosphere, home of the gods, fighting out their internal squabbles and for the most part ignoring the bothersome humans who lie far below, being much more concerned with the Ice Giants who still haven't returned the lawnmower.
At the edge of the Disc the seas boil off into space, and circling the Disc is its own little sun, an endlessly spinning fireball much smaller than conventional stars, more like a sunnette really. The whole Disc is held together rather loosely by a strong magical field, which is responsible for many of the vagaries of life found on the surface, from Wizards to Trolls, from Assassins to Kings. Somewhere in the middle, temperate regions of the Disc lies Ankh-Morpork, that ancient festering cesspool of a city loved by some, loathed by others, and inhabited by the rest, who had no choice. With air that brings tears to the eyes of long-departed merchants and the river Ankh flowing through its middle, which is so polluted and muddy that people thrown in with weights tied to their feet wait for darkness and crawl ashore. With the Wizards and Alchemists, with the Guilds and Guards, and overseeing it all, the Patrician, whose use of irony makes brave men quiver. This is the setting for the game. Abandon hope all ye who enter here. Or at least the next week of your life.
The main character in the game, and the one you control, is Rincewind the wizard (see the dopey looking Wizard in above picture). Fans of the books will know him well - a coward at heart, he is still alive today simply because he runs away from everything even slightly dangerous. He wears impressive robes of office, with a nice pointy hat, which makes him look not so much like the great wizard he wishes he was, as a rather large pencil. Control couldn't be easier- TWG have dispensed with the standard control system found in other games such as Day of the Tentacle, where a set of controls were found at the bottom of the screen which were clicked on to choose the appropriate action. In Discworld, the mouse cursor is an intelligent 'sparkly thing', which leaves a trail of stars behind it as it moves and brings up a label of any item of interest it is currently over. Once a label is displayed, that item can be interacted with by clicking the mouse buttons. Single left click is 'walk to', single right click is 'look at', and double left click is 'action'. This ridiculously simple approach really does work - walking to an object cause Rincewind to stroll over to the object, walk off screen, or whatever. Look at prompts a description of the object in full 'talkie' style, and Use depends on what kind of object it is. A person gets talked to, a ladder gets climbed up, a door gets opened (or closed), and so on.
Further ease is lent to the game by the remarkable inventory system used. Rather than have the inventory on the screen at all times, as in DOT, or on a separate screen, the inventory is brought up as a resizable, scrollable window by clicking on either Rincewind or the luggage (see snapshot above). Objects are displayed in the inventory window, which can be moved or resized in traditional style by dragging the title bar or a corner respectively. Items can be selected from the inventory and by clicking outside the window, game control is resumed. If you have selected an item, it is now shown under the mouse cursor, and double clicking on an on-screen object now causes Rincewind to try to use the item on the object. In the same way, objects can be combined in the inventory window.
I won't spoil the game by giving away too much, but suffice to say the aim of the game is to rid Ankh-Morpork of a rather nasty dragon that has decided to terrorise the city. The intro makes this clear enough, and it is strongly hinted more that once that dragons only exist if you believe in them - an essential part of the plot. A good knowledge of the books is not essential, but will help heighten the enjoyment of the game as all the well known characters you loved in the books are reproduced on the screen, from Nanny Ogg to the Patrician's "Information Retrieval Technitions".
Scenes in the game are split up into locations within Ankh-Morpork, travel between each being achieved by a map which appears when you leave a location. Clicking on a part of the map will move Rincewind there. Each setting is not just a single screen, or a collection of single screens, but a true panorama. Moving to the edge of the screen will cause the background to scroll along as you move, revealing more of the scene, horizontally or vertically depending on the direction of travel. Dotted around each scene is a collection of characters and objects pertaining to that screen - in the Square are old folk, a street urchin, Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, and so on. In the Palace, the Patrician, his Fool, and the list continues. This makes the game a joy to play, as you are drawn through each screen as more items of interest are revealed.
As has been mentioned, this game is available on both CD and floppy disk. This is not a choice to take lightly, however. The CD version comes with 300+ Megs of game, including full speech for all sections, providing a true multimedia experience (oh damn, there's the M word again), whereas the floppy disk version, while occupying 15 disks, has no speech, merely subtitles. In my recommendation, it is not worth getting the floppy version - the speech adds such a deep edge to the game that it is worth waiting till you buy a CD-ROM drive to get the game. True, without speech you still get the whole game, but many of the gags rely on the inflections of the voice or accompanying sound effects that I imagine the game would lose much of its sparkle without sound. Of course, it would be worthless to get the CD version if you have no soundcard, but I guess there are few who fall into that category by now.
Voices for all the characters are done by top voice artists - Eric Idle (Rincewind himself), Tony Robinson, Jon Pertwee and Kate Robbins, providing a wide range of characters and styles. Each character in the game has an accent and style of speech all to his/her self, allowing you to identify well with each one, although it was a bit unsettling to find that Corporal Carrot was Welsh, and some characters definitely seem to have lost out on the voice front (Detritus' voice is ridiculous, for example). It might have been better to have used slightly less famous voice artists for the game - I know Tony Robinson's voice so well I can easily spot the characters he's voiced over for.
Overall, the graphics found in this game are truly stunning. Each screen is scanned from a hand-drawn, highly detailed painting, giving the game a very realistic feel. The graphics give you a sense of being right there, with the bright, clean palace and the dingy, rustic square heightening the atmosphere. Items placed onto the background blend in seamlessly, instead of standing out garishly and at odds with their surroundings. Most objects have their own little animations, so that the backgrounds aren't just static, and these continue even during actions and speech sequences, bringing the scene to life.
Conversation in the game is carried out by double-clicking on the person in question and following a set of pre-defined conversations. Five basic conversation types are available - Joke, Sarcasm, Question, Anger, and Goodbye. Once you progress in the game, new options will be available, like Dragon, but this is rare. The conversations between characters that brought games like Underworld II into a whole new dimension are almost non-existent in Discworld. It is an annoying fallback of the game - each time you talk to the same person, you get exactly the same conversation, word for word, joke for joke. This gets extremely monotonous, with only five conversation options and little variation.
And now the big question - are we actually given the full Discworld treatment? Are we really transported into the middle of the Disc, or have the designers merely scratched the surface of potential? Well, I have to say that TWG could hardly have done a better job. Each part of Ankh-Morpork is just as I would have expected it, the fine artwork really drawing me into each scene and each character providing his/her own little touch to the game. Due to the simplicity of the controls, the game is a gem to play, and rather than splitting the plot into just a few large leaps during the game, TWG have spread the gameplay out over the whole game, so that even while aiming for major game aims, you've always got a little 'sub-quest' or two to carry out as well. I wouldn't like to estimate the hours of gameplay in this one - everyone has their own pace for a game like this one, but there's certainly plenty for novice and expert players alike to get their teeth into. And, with rumours of Discworld II being produced even now, the Discworld just couldn't look a better place to be.