Road to India is a third person, graphic, point and click (mouse driven) adventure. It was developed by Microids.

Road to India tells the tragic tale of a beautiful East Indian movie star terribly injured in a bomb blast in a busy New Delhi marketplace.

Our sometimes bumbling, sometimes brilliant hero, Fred Reynolds, and his lovely girlfriend, Anusha, get involved inadvertently. And this sets the scene for Fred's attempt to find Anusha in some rather exotic locations, including the Taj Mahal itself. The unusual New Delhi, India location provides a different and rewarding production arena for the game. The story is well-developed and the player will find it easy to become interested and fully engaged in pursuing Anusha's release and the unraveling of the mystery.

The puzzles in this game can be ranked from easy to medium-difficult. Learning to speak "monkey language" proves to be something of a test. There is also a optional juncture in the game where building a rat trap becomes an entertaining and mildly rewarding sidelight. There are several mazes to navigate, but they are not particularly difficult.

The game is of average length, but may appear to be somewhat shorter for some because of the ease with which expert gamers are able to navigate through the game and solve the puzzles.

The Options menu affords the choice of either 16 or 32 bit graphics and the graphics quality is nothing short of excellent. The player may also adjust the volume of ambient sounds. Subtitles are provided and the sensitivity of the mouse can be adjusted to increase or decrease the speed of on screen rotation.

The interface provides an Electronic Diary where your written journal and other letters and documents are stored for reference during the game. The Diary also contains your inventory and the Save/Load/Quit options.

Minimum System Requirements:
Windows 95/98/Me/2000
Processor II 266 Mhz
3D Video card
64 Mb RAM
400 Mhz free hard disk space
Sound card compatible with DirectX 8


Road to India can be purchased from the United Kingdom at Software First The cost is 17.99 pounds sterling. That will translate to approximately $25.OO by the time it is delivered in America. Delivery, incidentally, only takes about seven days.

Witchen,

Wow, I love the box shot at the beginning. I thought this game was beautiful, innovative (with the shift between the dream world and real one) and just plain laid back fun.

I loved your take on Fred. Although the game was great and the character's very believable, I kept thinking "gee what a dork - wonder what she sees in him LOL. Still ole Fred came through and was charming. It was nice to see a truly believable normal person in a reluctant hero role. Great review!!

Laura

I had some mixed feelings about this game. I've been wanting to visit India in a game for a long time, so I found this game instantly appealing. I loved the dreamworld vs. reality idea. It was especially fun to see how much more aggressive Fred was in his dreams (knock down that wall -- after all, it's just the Taj Mahal!). After awhile, I found myself speculating as to the way Fred was going to lose consciousness next.

The cutscenes were terrific. I found the the puzzles to be very logical. I had to consult a walkthrough a few times, when I had missed a hotspot (usually something very high or very low).

I couldn't help comparing the monkey language puzzle to the Church of the Machine programming puzzle in "Obsidian." Um, the monkey puzzle was easier.

I think Microids is very good at making believeable critters -- though the ones in RTI are, of course, not as exotic as the ones in "Amerzone". This development team also brilliantly uses the effects of light and shadow in their graphics.

A lot of the game takes place either at night or in the dusky hour right before dawn. This gave the game an eerie feeling, but toward the end, when you see sunlight pouring through the windows of the mansion, I found myself wishing that more of the game had taken place in daylight, when colors would have been brighter. Remembering the bright interiors in "Pompeii," for instance, which has a similar rescue theme, made me realize that I felt less drawn in to the surroundings in RTI (on the other hand, I liked the plot and the character of the hero better in RTI than in "Pompeii").

I would have enjoyed a bit more of an explanation of how the goddess Kali fit into what was going on in the game -- I feel certain she had something to do with the challenges in Fred's dreams.

There are many beautiful but menacing underground places to explore in this game, and overall I had a great time with it. I found the ending quite abrupt, however, which made the game seem rather short. (Though if your rat-trapping skills are good, there is a nice little pay-off at the end.)

[This message has been edited by Becky (edited 09-11-2001).]

Good review Witchen. My only complaints with this game are minor, it could have been longer, and the 'empty' feeling of the streets in what is supposed to be an overpopulated country made it feel as if I was exploring a ghost town.

Otherwise, I thought the graphics were great, the story was good and puzzles where challenging without being impossible to solve. I also liked the idea of the real world vs dream world element of the game.

Hi there, nolalou.....Yes, good observation. I noticed that too, as did some other players. It did seem unreal that a crowded city would be so "uncrowded."

I thought the dream sequences might have caused a bit of confusion for some. But, in the end, it all becomes fairly clear. Altogether, a different, colorful and highly enjoyable game.

Love, Witchen =O)

[This message has been edited by Witchen (edited 09-20-2001).]

I just finished this game. It was an ok game but my experienced was marred by all of the system problems. It doesn't appear that Microids cared to help because they never responded to my E-mail. Hopefully in the future they will provide more support.

Hi, I loved the review. I just wanted to add a few minor observations.

- until I reinstalled DirectX v.8.1, which is a free download from Microsoft, my screen would go blank when I started the game and back to my desktop when I pressed enter.

- the movements of the characters in cutscenes were as believable as any I've seen. It was close to movie quality.

- the game is on two CDs with only one disk swap. As mentioned, the game didn't seem too long, but there were quite a bit of beautiful graphics on the two CDs.

- the ambient music was notable in its repetitiveness. Very short musical phrases over and over.

- the voice acting was good with lots of emotion.

- I missed being able to click on lots of things as in Tex Murphy games and 'just explore'. If an item didn't belong in the story, it wasn't a hotspot.

- I really enjoyed the game. It was fun!

Regards, aberfoyle