Sometimes I don’t do any of that. This was one of
those times.
The sense of obligation was still there, but it was
tempered by a touch of selfishness. Or perhaps respect. I have played the
previous two instalments in the Last Half of Darkness series, and
knew this was a game for hastening slowly. The atmosphere is slow and
dark, brooding even, and the experience and exploration need to be in
kind. It would be rude to rush, so I didn’t.
All I have… gone with my wife
Tomb of Zojir is a
sum-of-the-parts sort of thing. The graphics won’t blow you away, but
there is a simplistic awkwardness to them that grabs you and provides just
the right amount of strange. Light flickers, things scuttle, or flit, or
appear and then disappear. The sounds deepen the mood – from the insects,
to the rain, to the wailing – and then the infrequent music adds a
fingernails-on-chalkboard edginess. Some images are meant to frighten or
shock. Put it all together and you get those little moments of frisson
that prickle and tease. Delicious!
It’s a world of swamps, and mansions, and damp and
entropy. If it’s all a little strange, then so are you. You, the Stranger,
need to restore the bloodstones that guarded Zojir’s tomb and kept the
spirit world at bay. But first you have to get in.
When you do, read and collect and listen and think.
Take notes. There are a lot of puzzles, and they do not lead you by the
nose one at a time. I didn’t find it to be a hard game, but there were
puzzles that forced me to reconsider and backtrack and review. A few had
compound solutions, requiring solves elsewhere to get pieces of
information needed. There were some “doh!” moments, as there often are
when the puzzles are well crafted.
I don’t remember feeling cheated by a solution,
which is a good sign. Nor did the puzzles feel tacked on, but rather were
embedded into the proceedings in (by and large) explicable ways. According
to the website, a few puzzles apparently solve themselves after several
tries.
And don’t forsake your game paraphernalia. I love
getting stuff with my games – the old Infocom games with their many
feelies still have pride of place on my shelf – and Zojir’s tomb comes
full of stuff. More than that, they aren’t just novelties, but are
intimately related to a puzzle. I won’t spoil it by saying any more, but
it’s pretty neat. Plus there are plastic spiders!
Violent darkness takes her life
It’s a mouse driven outing, played in the first
person. Icons indicate the variety of things you can do. Left click brings
up the inventory, right click examines the items. You can combine items,
and selecting the correct one for use will cause the item to shake. A map
will help you get about.
You can tweak some settings at the initial screens,
turning some effects on or off and determining how the transitions work.
Saving is straightforward, and overall the interface will be familiar to
most adventure gamers, and easy to get on top of for a newcomer.
This game seemed longer that the other ones, but it
might just be the length of time over which I played it.
I did encounter some startup issues, and the website
says that some codecs have caused problems. The website is full of
information to help you if you do strike difficulty, and if all else
fails, send an email. I can confirm that you will get a response, and you
will get it quickly. And it wasn’t because I was reviewing; I sent mail
from another address pretending I had a problem and got just as efficient
service.
It comes, I guess, from being a one-man band. WRF is
William R Fisher, who pretty much does everything. Tomb of Zojir is
all the more impressive for it.
There are some other little surprises which, if I
told you about, would defeat the purpose of them being such a thing.
Suffice to say that there are many reasons to venture into Zojir’s tomb,
and that you will indeed be surprised. Pleasantly, as well as in other
ways. I was already a fan of the Stranger, and the Tomb of Zojir
only cements my feelings.
Everything considered, this is a game I think you
should play.
A-
Last Half of Darkness: Tomb of Zojir
can be purchased from the
Last Half of Darkness website. The game will also be available in
stores in the U.S. in the Fall of 2009.
I played on:
OS: Win XP
Professional SP3
Processor:
AMD Phenom 9500 Quad Core CPU 2.2 GHz
Ram: 3.25GB
DDR2 400MHz
Gx card: ATI
Radeon HD 3850 512Mb
