The City of Lost
Children
Quicklist of game
characteristics
(requested by
Gameboomers members)
-
Third person
point of view
-
Keyboard Control
-
7 saves
-
It's possible to
get a "game over" in the game, but rare
-
1 CD, short game
-
Box says DOS,
but it seems to work fine in Windows as well
The Game and the
Movie
Miette means
crumb.
That's one of the
two things I remember from listening to the commentary on the DVD
edition of the movie. The other is that the movie starts out
confusing... and gets worse. The commentators were just kidding
around of course. The movie wasn't that hard to understand. But
unless you've seen the movie and have some idea of the plot, the
game may not make much sense.
The City of Lost
Children is based on a 1995 movie of the same name. The movie is a
bizarre sort of fairy tale, atmospheric and full of symbolism. The
game retains some of the atmosphere, but nothing of the symbolism or
the subtlety of the relationship between the little girl, Miette,
and her friend, the oddly named "One." If you've seen the movie, you
know One used to be a fisherman on a whaling ship. Then one day he
heard the whales sing. After that his harpoon always missed, so he
lost his job. Then he found employment as a sideshow strong man...
until his employer was killed. He adopted a street urchin, a small
boy named Denree, as his "little brother." Then Denree was kidnapped
by the evil Cyclops men, so called because they have a single
mechanical eye. The Cyclops took Denree to be used in Krank's
experiments along with the other children. Krank is a manufactured
person himelf, who is incomplete. He has aged prematurely because he
cannot dream. So he seeks to regain his youth by stealing the dreams
of children. His attempts don't work, but he continues
experimenting, believing he can succeed if only he finds just the
right child.
Most of the
characters in the movie don't make it into the game. Denree is only
seen in the introductory video that plays every time you start the
game. The Cyclops men and their perverted pseudo-religion are merely
occasional "bad guys" in the game. The clones are completely absent.
All the darkly humorous events on the oil rig, where the
"brain-in-a-tank" taunts Krank and where Krank tries to regale the
kidnapped children by dressing up as Santa Claus and lip synching a
song, are totally missing. So is the amazing Rube Goldberg-esque
"journey of the flea" back to its master, which has to be seen to be
believed. The story and characters in the game are simplified and
altered to suit what could be fit into the game.
Characters
Your character is
a little girl of perhaps nine or ten years old. She is called Miette
and she is an orphan. Her life consists of stealing things for
Pieuvre, the evil headmistress of the orphanage. Pieuvre was a
wonderful special effect in the movie. She/they was/were Siamese
twins, who often spoke and acted in tandem. You see little of
Pieuvre in the game, except the two times when Pieuvre gives Miette
her thieving assignments. Miette does meet the Diver, who rescues
her at one point. But she doesn't have a chance to talk to him. She
hears him talking in his sleep, but can't have a conversation with
him.
There are some
characters in the game that I don't remember from the movie. For
example, the fisherman, the watchman, the man painting the boat,
etc. were either minor characters in the movie who I don't remember,
or were created solely to provide some obstacle or solution in the
game.
Most of the
conversations Miette does have are brief. You can ask things more
than once, but will usually only get repeat answers. Conversations
are subtitled.
Graphics
The graphics were
one of the best things about the game. They were dark, detailed, and
atmospheric. Although they are 256 color (SVGA), they look better
than some 16-bit color graphics I've seen.
The game was
released in 1997 and cut scenes are of typical quality for games
that came out around that time. By that I mean they appear to have
have fine horizontal lines running across. They don't have the
resolution of the cut scenes used in today's games. There is a
pronounced difference in quality between the cut scenes, with their
horizontal lines, and the rest of the game, which has better
resolution.
The animation of
the characters was quite good. Miette herself had a peculiar sort of
hunched-over way of carrying her shoulders, but her movements were
fairly realistic. If you waited a while without moving her, she'd
fidget and bend down to pull up her socks. If you ran her into a
wall she'd recoil and say "ohh." If you got her too near the edge of
a dock, she'd wave her arms around and her body would sway as she
tried to get her balance and keep from falling. She was never just
frozen in place. Other characters would also have movement. The game
was not static.
Acting, Music and
Sound
The voice acting
was meant to mimic the voices in the movie. The voices weren't quite
as good, and sometimes seemed out of place without the context of
the movie. For example, One's strange accent was part of his
"fish-out-of-water" persona, which made sense in the movie, but not
much sense in the game unless you've already seen the movie.
The music was
taken from the soundtrack of the movie, which was excellent. So it
was better quality than most game music. It's mostly orchestral
music which enhances the atmosphere of the game.
Sounds effects and
background sounds were also good. The environment of the game was
brought to life very well.
Controls
The City of Lost
Children uses keyboard controls. You can't use the mouse at all. The
arrow keys move your character around. The Escape key accesses the
Main Menu for saving and loading games. The Escape key also allows
you to skip cut scenes. The P key pauses the game, which can be
useful because some parts of the game are timed. Holding down the
Control key along with the forward arrow key will cause Miette to
run. Alt will make her duck. The Page Up key will cause Miette to
pick something up or put it down. The Page Down key will cause her
to speak to another character. Tab will open inventory or cause
Miette to put an item she is holding into inventory. The Enter key
will cause her to interact with something or take some action.
The keys
themselves aren't that complicated, but it can be difficult to
orient Miette into the proper position to make them active. So it's
easy to miss things like inventory items, especially since you may
be properly aimed, but just not quite close enough. If Miette has
bumped into a wall or railing, she'll take a couple of steps back,
and you may have to make her step forward once to get into position.
The camera that
appears in the upper right part of the screen doesn't indicate an
action can be made. It only indicates that you can shift to a
different camera angle by hitting the Spacebar. If Miette isn't
facing the right direction when you click Page Up, Page Down, or
Enter, she'll say she "can't manage it" or "I can't do anything" or
something similar. You'll hear her say this a lot in the game.
Loading and Saving
the game is done from the main menu. You are allowed to type in a
name for your save. A small screenshot of your location is also
saved.
Puzzles and other
gameplay comments
There is very
little inventory in the game, but most puzzles involve some use of
inventory. Talking to characters may give clues about what you need
to do, or look for. Unless you have a walkthrough, a lot of the game
will consist of walking Miette around the gameworld and rotating her
around, looking for the icon that indicates potential inventory to
appear at the top left of the screen. It's easy to miss things, even
though you're quite near them. Some of them are hidden in areas you
can't even see, like behind a bunch of crates or boxes. So you
really have to depend on the icon appearing, and sometimes it only
flickers into view for a split second. You can pick up a few items
that have no use, so there are a few red herrings. Periodically
Miette will lose all her inventory, which is fortunate because there
are only ten inventory slots and what she loses won't be needed.
There are maybe
three timed sequences, none of which are closely timed. Miette isn't
killed, but she does get thrown in the cellar if she gets caught or
doesn't move fast enough. If she gets thrown in the cellar, it may
or may not be a "game over." If Pieuvre throws Miette in the cellar
at the beginning of the game, she may find they've forgotten to lock
the cellar door and she can just walk on out. Later in the game the
cellar door is apt to be locked, at which point you see a Game Over
video.
Minimum specs
The specs listed
on the game box are
DOS 6.22 or
greater
486 DX4100
8 MB RAM
SVGA
Soundblaster
compatible sound card
Keyboard
2X CD drive
Tested computer
Win 98SE
AMD 233 MHz
64 MB RAM
Matrox Mystique
4MB PCI video card
Creative AWE 64
Gold sound card
32X CD drive
The game seems to
function fine in Windows, though it only lists DOS on the box. I can
only guess at why this might be. Games run faster in DOS. This is
why real time action games used to use DOS even after most adventure
games were made to run in Windows. Perhaps most computers back in
1997 weren't capable of running the game fast enough in Windows. But
as I said, this is just a guess.
Bugs and Potential
Problems
None encountered.
Recommendations
This is one of
those games I enjoyed despite its faults, but I hesitate to
recommend it. The atmosphere and music was great, but the gameplay
was sub-standard, unless you enjoy walking your character over every
inch of the gameworld and panning around, waiting for an inventory
icon to appear. Of course it isn't nearly so bad if you use a
walkthrough and know where to search for inventory items. But not
everyone wants to do that and it's a very short game if you do. I'd
strongly recommend seeing the movie first, so you have some idea of
what's going on. If you don't like the movie, it's unlikely you'll
enjoy the game. If you do like the movie, you may enjoy revisiting
the gameworld. If I had to rate the game, I'd give it an A in
atmosphere and a D- in puzzles and plot.
design copyright ©
2003
GameBoomers
Group
