Last weekend I spent a good amount of time playing a free adventure game. You can get it at Crystal Shard.

Review: A Tale of Two Kingdoms

Overview
If you like old school adventure games like Sierra’s King’s Quest 1-6 then you will want to check this out. Almost all other good Adventure Game Studio games that are out there are remakes. This one however is not, it is an original and excellent tale of Crystal Shards own making.

Story
Now a word of warning, this game has quite a lot of depth. The first few minutes in the story have a lot of background story. Its a little slow to start out but if you look at it overall it paints a beautiful panorama of their little world. The story starts with you the hero, Maledun Whiteblade in his home land where he and his friend Branwyn are asked to come to the aid of a rival kingdom, and former enemy, King Vortigern of Theylinn. You then sail to Theylinn and are thrown into adventure, confusion, and intrigue of the local citizens. The amount of depth appealed to me but will turn away some. Its kind of humorous, it has more depth then some light fantasy books I have read recently. I think because of the depth that they give, it paints a portrait of the characters so well that you feel like you know them by the end of the game. Many of the names are hard to pronounce but they are constant and add to the culture of their lands.

Gameplay
Its quite a complex game that has five different endings that you can get depending on what you do and what side quests you finish. I have got 3 out of the 5 possible endings. The fourth ending isn’t much different I don’t think, but the fifth is so I will have to go find it. This game didn’t seem like a very long game because there is only one area that you really ever frequent. The capital city and a very small town and the surrounding country side. The game can be relatively short but if you go for the best ending it takes time. It took roughly 4 hours to play it straight through while using the walkthrough. I played it first and got two of the lesser endings. Then I played it through again with the walkthrough to see what I missed. Which happened to be a lot. Some of the side quests are challenging, but the biggest is the mystery of the assassin’s identity. If you don’t pay attention to what people in the town tell you, you will miss it. I only got it right by a wild guess, so I guess I wasn’t paying attention enough. The walkthrough doesnt tell you the identity. Which I was happy about but then frustrated when I couldn’t figure it out. Cleverly they do have some of the puzzles that change when you play it again.

Graphics
The graphics in this game are very very good for VGA 640×480. They fit perfectly into the adventure game style and look very clean. A little shout out, my cousin made the gui and inventory graphics. A few of the portrait articles are only decent, unfortunately the hero Maeldun’s but overall they are really good. And some like the goblin leader have amazing portraits. A cool little feature is on most if not all screens their are small animals, or birds that fly by to add a living feeling to the game. The capital city of Carbonek was also done quite well, There are many people always coming and going and they enter and exit the shops as well. And occasionally one of the main characters walks around the town and you will be able to talk to them even when they are out on business.

Extras
You get a pretty cool surprise after you beat it for the first time. The next time you play the game you get a blue cup in your inventory which you can use in each different scene to get a directory’s commentary for that screen. Since I am interested with game making it was a nice feature. And if you ever don’t know what to do, go visit your friend the bard Talisen at your campsite.