Mazer II - The Ghost of Mordaine (1992)

The subtitle is only in some places, perhaps because you don't know who Mordaine is until you've won.

Name:Mazer II - The Ghost of Mordaine
Number:226
Year:1992
Publisher:Big Red Computer Club
Developer:Farfetch Software
Genre:FPS/Adventure
Difficulty:5/5
Time:15 hours 10 minutes
Won:Yes (98W/72L)

Mazer II is business as usual when it comes to these early days of FPS. It's odd, but not really that unusual to its contemporaries. It's an exclusive to one system, in this case the Apple IIGS, (basically a color Macintosh before they were called that) unique control scheme, an elaborate story that seems unfitting for this era, and pieces of absolute frustration.

The first bit of important information is the title. No, you did not miss my coverage of the first game. I don't know what the first game is. Maybe there isn't one. But the experience is not ruined by the lack of the first game, it's ruined by other things. In fact, I daresay missing the opening of the game may have made the experience better. Mystery is key to a good story, and this game serves mystery up.

One of the curious Mazeworlders, telling me what his problem is.

The story is, you, presumably the player himself, has arrived in Mazeworld, which is a world made of mazes. Mazeworld is in pretty bad shape right now, beings from the Dark Realm are invading, slowly draining the life of the place. These creatures breached in part, thanks to a being called The Adversary, who brought in the Dark Worlders in order to enact some mysterious plan himself. Now you have to stop these people while figuring out what happened to the creators of Mazeworld and a past adversial figure called Mordaine.

It's a basic story, but told in an interesting way. It isn't obvious what the plot development is going to be until you see it, which is important, though I think if you stick to a thought you have when you get most of it, you have a 50/50 shot of getting it right. Being dripfed the story through encounters with people desperate for you to help them or villains about to order your death does wonders. But I think I liked it most of all because, despite being a sequel, feels quite like a story about a children's fantasy world being invaded by some evil. You truly are the only hope.

The game is controlled almost exclusively by the mouse, with the exception of the escape key for the menu. Only, it's a Macintosh mouse, basically. So you get one button doing too many things and then movement which you hope won't go out of the emulator's window because there is no true fullscreen command and even the mouselock function doesn't lock it in the window all the time.

Affirmative energy floating in the game world.

You get four weapons, as such. Only one is truly a weapon, destructive. The other three are for interactions with stuff. Creative, which could be thought of as a use key, except from a distance. Affirmative and negative, which are a yes and no answer to questions. You change, not via any reasonable method, but by holding the mouse button down and dragging it into a certain direction. There's technically a fifth, which is nothing, used for advancing dialog.

Every weapon drains energy, and you of course have health on the left. It regenerates, there are no pickups. Ammo also regenerates. Unfortunately, it regenerates slowly, and enemies are far stronger than you are in numbers, but usually not in actual strength. Combat is weird, because of the controls it was never going to be great, but the game kind of tries. To start with, direct confrontation is suicide. Enemies are better at shooting than you are...not because they actually aim any better, but because they don't have to worry about accidentally shooting creative energy. They actually have the same handicaps you do, in addition to dying in one hit.

Combat with some of the creatures on one floor, this is as close as it gets to a normal FPS.

Enemies respawn, at set points after their death. In theory, you should be able to survive better than your enemies, but in practice, as with Doom's Nightmare! difficulty, this isn't happening. This is basically just a repeat of Galactic Dan, all the good strategies I've picked up over the years don't work when my control scheme is a mouse alone. At least I don't have to jump with the mouse and moving is...normal for a mouse. I get the feeling that the author was really into this whole virtual world thing and using as limited a control scheme as he could manage to get that across. Nice idea, terrible execution.

These guys are blocking a portal, and if I get close they kill me, which would be 100% in place at your usual adventure game.

This ties into what I feel is the real meat of the game, the puzzles. This feels adventure-esque for the simple reason that the actual gameplay is just a disguise for navigating between puzzles. Fighting enemies is incidental. They either respawn infinitely or are invulernable. Not exactly a point in favor of combat. It's very odd, because if it were a few years later, one might say that the choice of an adventure disguising itself as something else was an attempt to make itself more palatable, but in 1992, when FPS wasn't a genre yet? I don't understand it.

The puzzles were pretty good when they were centered around using the four energies cleverly. Paying attention to the world and how someone else is interacting with it. There was one puzzle I couldn't find my way around without cheating, but I can be pretty certain it isn't just a clever application of some energy, since I tried a lot of things and never found a real answer to it. The puzzle after it is also kind of crap, both as a puzzle and what sense it makes with its solution in-universe. Every other puzzle is fittingly logical.

I like this game far better in theory than in practice. It's the world of a children's story if the villain won, where you slowly try to make things right. Dodging enemies stronger and tougher than you as you try to get help from the few remaining helpful entities. This is what it is in my head. In practice, there are two separate genres here, one of which has much more focus on it, while the other is stapled on awkwardly. Which seems to be a common problem with adventure/FPS hybrids, this, Galactic Empire, Inca and Isle of the Dead, to just list the ones I've already covered. I know in all those cases, the developers would have been better off trying to make the adventure half of the equation the whole game. With that, let's get to the rating.

Weapons:
It's hard to describe what you're given as a weapon, more like a single gun with four different ammo types, all infinite. 1/10

Enemies:
Sort of tied into interactivity intimately. Every enemy is tied into a puzzle on the level they're on. While you can delay them all, you can't stop them without solving that puzzle. Some are easier than others to delay though. 3/10

Non-Enemies:
Every time a character acts as a friendly it's basically just a scripted sequence, but it does feel more interesting than most FPS by this point. They're actually helping me for once! 1/10

Levels:
Fairly simple for the most part. As could be expected, a few levels are mazes. The first I didn't find too annoying, you can easily do the wallhugging trick to get where you need to go. (Well, in theory, that was where the puzzle I couldn't solve was) The second, meanwhile, does not allow this trick. It also has hordes of enemies who can easily kill you. The rest are all simple enough to figure out and center around the puzzle more. 3/10

Player Agency:
Annoying, tedious, and I'm tired of this sort of thing. The issues here are half what the game is doing, all mouse, and half what the emulator is doing, you can't really capture the mouse in KEGS. You're also slow and can't sidestep. It takes a moment to shift energies, unless you get unlucky in combat and accidentally switch from destructive to negative energy, which isn't the same thing. It's also annoying to have the use key tied to ammo. 1/10

Interactivity:
For such a limited amount of actions, the game gets some decent mileage out of them. 4/10

Atmosphere:
Mazer really sells itself on the once bright world enshrouded in darkness, with each corner hiding something unpleasant, often for ill. 4/10

Graphics:
Amateurish, but charming and effective. Very little animation though. 3/10

Story:
Were it not for the story, I don't think I would have powered through this one. It's not mind-blowing, but it was enjoyable enough that I felt the effort was worth it. 4/10

Sound/Music:
None.

That's 24. Which is a bit generous for another game with a repulsive control scheme, but does reflect that I found it enjoyable despite its handicaps.

With that, 1992 should be mostly smooth sailing. I have an arcade game and an Archimedes game left, but both of those should be simple enough to cover. There are going to be some replays, of course, but those should be simple. Outside of a Mike Singleton game called Ashes of Empire, everything in the near future looks to be simple enough. Which probably means some of it isn't, but enough of it is that I'm not too worried.

Mazer II: Won

When we last left off I was stuck trying to get past some starfish which I just can't figure out. I've been thinking about how I can solve it a lot more than actually trying to solve it. The problem is that this really isn't the kind of game where that strategy is rewarded. To go off somewhere and think on the matter incidentally and then return generally works if you've been presented with all the possible actions you can take. Yet a game that doesn't do this still has things I can do. Actions which, even if I don't understand how they could work, could work. There are no actions I haven't taken but could, at least not the kind that are so bordering on desperation that they're practically insane.

For instance, I could start shooting random walls with random kinds of energy. I have no reason this could work. There's nothing visible for me to shoot. Except...hang on, maybe the bars block my shot and I need to try spraying and praying past the starfishs? Maybe I didn't try that already? The bars don't block my shots, so that isn't it. Spraying and praying won't work, if I can reach something on the other side, surely I'm not just supposed to just shoot it in effective darkness? So I go around, again. I didn't check the walls, but then, I assumed I could spot any signs there was something unusual there. There isn't. So, I cheat. By just moving myself across the room. It takes a few tries to a safe location, and I really only got it by doing it from the side with the blue guy.

I'm really not sure how you get past this legitimately, but the other side has a set of bars. The only thing I can think of that I haven't tried is to get the two starfishs to fight, but I spent years on Galactic Empire with a similar problem and I don't feel that generous anymore. The doorway past here is already open, so I could have missed something in the north section. The orb. How do I deal with this? I don't know, I can't move it, and if I use any energy other than affirmative or creative, a creature pops out and kills me without any resistance. Affirmative just changes what creature kills me. Creative does nothing no matter what.

I go past it to the teleport. These things are around, acting as the limbs of some unseen enemy. Really creepy, also really easy to accidentally teleport back a level. If I stick around, white jellyfish crawl across the ceiling and then...

It's really not that terrifying in picture form.

...kill me. That's out. Talking is out. So I try bruteforcing it, and find a teleport. The next floor is exactly the same as this floor. In the sense that there are more of these things around. So I cheat...prematurely, it turns out, because you can just shoot these things. The eyes, not the jellyfish, they might be invulnerable. Well, this is a per session thing, so I'm not turning it off.

I go through a few floors of teleports, and I end up here. I get lost, but then I wonder if this is what the map was for. After all, it isn't like it was for anything last time. And it is, I eventually find my way. Time to go to this brain thing. This outta help me somehow. I'm glad I decided to cheat, because this is turning into too much for my ammo to normally keep up with, just waves upon waves of enemies. I must have accidentally skipped a massive chunk of stuff.

This leads to the brain, which is this thing. He gives a speech about energy, which basically just leads into him spawning too many enemies for anyone to fight. I really hope I accidentally skipped something important. I shoot him, and the things until he dies. I try talking to one of his...uh...followers afterwards, but it doesn't speak. I walk back through the maze and discover that nothing much has changed. I check the floppy image for unencrypted text, and discover that the brain should have said something to me before I killed it. I think I should have tried to kill it by cutting off its eyes first, but I didn't think of that in combat.

The enemy AI in this is very cruel. It's not unmanageable, but the eyes drift towards portals, which, you know, you need to go through, so you're basically running ahead of these guys in order to survive. Based on events that are about to happen, I guess that at some point you get a health/ammo upgrade that I just couldn't figure my way around. Because I know someone got past this section because there's a map for it, meaning he didn't get ground to a pulp. So, at this point I'm going to err on the safe side and try to cheat every time.

Not killing the brain seems to be tricky, I guess you just shoot him once before he finishes talking, since during the fight you will probably die based on the unearthly amount of spammed enemies the game throws at you. He tells me that to obtain total power, I need to become a being of entropy, joining with the fara eferon, the illusory world of appearances. He then sends me to a new room. I hope that I didn't need to destroy that orb. This also adds a question as to what would happen if I didn't deal with the portal to the Dark World down below.

Okay, a mirror and four pedestals. (I didn't take a picture, but there's a video later) The brain said something about creative energy, so I shoot the pedestals with creative energy. Nothing happens and I wonder if I did something wrong.

Until this guy pops out of the wall. He flashes through colors. I get the feeling he's probably not on my side. I think he's the Adversary, but I can't be certain, he might be Mordaine. He doesn't introduce himself, just informs me that he was cast out by Memory Store, and is now going to take over Mazeworld. I'm then marched into the mirror and die. There's no avoiding this, I've put myself into an unwinnable situation. The question is, where?

There are three options for this. Firstly, Mordaine's ghost was mentioned by the sphere after taking out the Dark King. The problem is, I can't see any place where this ghost wouldn't have already been discovered if I could. Secondly, I should have taken out the sphere that the blue guy wanted me to take out. This is the most obvious yet most perplexing case. Thirdly, there's another option I figured out by reading the ending text ahead of time. I'll explain it at the end. Because at this point, I don't know if I'm going to win or lose, but I am going to finish this.

My first plan is an odd one. Remember how I could switch being going to the maze section with the blue guy and the area where I have to avoid the dark ones? I found the maze later, so maybe the amoebas on the opening level are tied into the starfish in the maze. It's a nice idea, but it isn't right. They're not spawned by anything, they're always there. So, to get to the sphere, I need to find the ghost. I need to find something, anything.

So I explore the opening level again. The theory being that maybe the ghost appears after you are told about it. Because I already checked the maze for ghosts, albeit indirectly. There's nothing here, and double checking the maze again, there's nothing there either. That's unfortunate, because I suspect the condition for the starfish is the same as in other places, there's something there I need to find. No, it isn't in the area where the hooded figures were either. Went all the way down, nothing. I got one last idea, and this is either going to work or I'm out of luck.

Don't do anything with the Dark World, just go to the brain first. I actually get distracted on this by reader LanHawk, who was telling me about something connected to Valhalla, but then got unluckily roped into helping me with this game a bit. Alas, I think in retrospect all I did was waste his afternoon, but this distraction might have just helped me figure out another piece of the puzzle. After finally being able to move my character through walls again, I end up figuring out the trick to destroying the orb. Spam affirmative energy until the blue guy pops up.

He destroys the orb, then tells me about how things came to be this way here. The denizens of this level were tasked with turning away those who came in unknowing of the peril that lay below. Mordaine, believing himself to be capable of remaking the world as it was before. There was a great knowledge, from the Mazelords, which apparently was what undid Mordaine. With that, the two missing pieces are how to defeat the starfish and if Mordaine's ghost is around. Arguably, the two key points that have been holding me back from doing this legitimately. And after going through the maze again, no change. It looks like this might genuinely be the point preventing me from winning, which suggests that the two aren't linked like I think. Since I figured this out, maybe it works if I take out the Dark Lord?

Answer, I win. Another text pops up and I get the Dark Lord and the ghost of...Mordaine stare at each other. I can go into the ghost and then kill the Dark Lord. If I don't, we both die. George thanks me for my help and then the mirror turns into a normal portal. The game ends. With that, I am likely one of the few people to win Mazer II, even if it is a hollow victory. I will likely never know how to get past those starfish legitimately, nor am I ever likely to.

Finishing this, I'm still not entirely sure I understand the events as they happened. The glowing guy was Mordaine, as mentioned by the Dark Lord, and George called him the Adversary. Since it's also implied that he was stuck down in the area I was sent to, who helped the Dark Lord then? It just seems odd that Mordaine can affect the world so as a ghost trapped in a small part of the world. I know this isn't true, but when I realized I could walk into Mordaine, I thought that maybe that meant I was Mordaine all along, and this was the Adversary. It's in my head, possibly like most of this game's virtues, but it would have been an interesting twist.

This Session: 8 hours 30 minutes

Final Time: 15 hours 10 minutes

Mazer II: Somehow Still Not Dead

Futilely trying to find information of some sort online, I had a brief moment of hope. Someone had a map...

This is at least helpful that somewhere along the line, someone won this game.

 ...and I don't understand it at all. I guess 1 is the place with the dark robed men, but that's where my understanding ends. It's a very bad map. Because if that is the place with the dark robed men, it only vaguely shows how it's designed. It's useless for navigation. If it isn't the place with the dark robed men...then it's 3? But that doesn't make any sense either...oh, things are worse than they were before!

Doing this isn't a case of screwing up, it's the game instakilling you.

My easiest idea to test out is to simply see if I can attack the blue one guarding the passage. That's not happening, he's invulernable. Let's try the next option, making a map. This is kind of tricky because I can't see the grid here. So I have to guess. Yippee. Reminder, this is the most action-packed game I've ever had to map out. Either the game was slow enough that I didn't need to worry about it or the game had an in-game pause or out of game pause I could use while the action was on-going to map. This has a pause, but it stops the game dead. I wonder if I should try taking videos for these in the future.

Remember, there's no in-game grid, so I have to guess the length of corridors, it's a bit longer on the left.

Eventually, I make most of the map, but the important is that yes, the area with the starfish is where I need to go. That's the only way in. I didn't fill in the path right then down and up, but that's not important. I don't need to go there. So, I need to figure out how to get past the starfish. Galactic Empire taught me that I need to get enemies to deal with the problem for me...except that there's not a way to get enemies past this because they follow me.

Maybe it has something to do with energy. I know what I would do if I had a four energies and a null energy mode, use the null energy mode. That doesn't work, nor does using up most of my energy either. I double check that it isn't a specific kind of energy I need to shoot, then go back to the floor with the roaming dark figures.

Last time I ignored these orbs because I assumed they were used to distract the robed figures. That may still be true. I don't know what it is I'm supposed to be doing here. Shooting the orb doesn't work, but there are a ton of lava lamps I'm shoot until something good happens. I do this for a moment until...
 

...I find another way out. Aha! I need to find a distraction or a way to eliminate these guys. The level itself is quite simple, I think there's only one guy roaming around, or the area is large enough that only one is ever a threat at one point in time. So long as I keep my distance from him, I can slowly but surely light up the lava lamps. I do a good job...until two things happen. First, because one of the robed ones is constantly wandering around, I can't stop him from unlighting the ones I light up. Second, one is camping out near one set of lights. There's not much point in getting him away, alas.

By pure accident, I find out that you can move around the glowing balls. You just have to move without touching the walls. I discover this just outside the Oracle that didn't seem very helpful earlier. With the ball near, it shoots at a robed one stuck on a nearby set of lava lamps that actually stopped it. Probably because there's something important there. Okay...what if this is what I have to do, but without the robed one there? I can in fact, guide the bolt. I just need to get the robed ones away from the front side. Which I don't even need all the balls for, I just need enough to get the bolt near the ones guarding the second portal, which causes them to leave and allows me to go around them and in.

This must be the Dark Realm. Now I'm alone...in the dark. I just need to shoot these lights, and then walk out. I tread very cautiously and...

It's a square with a crossroad in the middle, and robed ones are blocking the portal now. At first I think I've screwed myself until I spot a hole in the wall. Aha, this must be the Dark Realm, I'm in the place the crack was made.

It's a long tunnel with green mist in it. I am genuinely worried at this. What is this game doing and where is it going? There are paths without the green mist, but the first led nowhere, so I gambled that I had to stay on the path. I ended up at a red door, meeting the Dark King, accidentally walked out, returned and he said I returned. So I reloaded, found a light hole and found myself next to two robed figures. Ah, where I came from. I know exactly what kind of trickery is going on here, but it's very effective.

He's so tough that if you shoot him, he doesn't even try to shoot back.

The Dark King. Nope, he's supposed to ask why I returned to his domain...only when he realizes who I am, he isn't afraid. I'm guessing I'm going to find out that either Mordaine or the Adversary met with this guy, and I need to get him to take this guy out. Because I can't do it, in fact, he doesn't even care, he allows me to leave, but his minion, the Eashire Cat, is going to take me out in ten seconds. Was Cheshire Cat taken? Blah. Now I have to find my way back in the darkness. This is easier than I think, but it turns out that because I activated the lights, I have put myself in an unwinnable situation. Even partially activating the lights puts me there, and my save before this is quite a ways back.

And...it happens again, but slightly differently. It gives me a little hope...but nothing else happens. I can't get by, and I can't wait. It looks like this might just be the end. I go back to that map I got at the start, since I have nothing else to go on. One of the areas I've been to has to have another exit, because that's what the map says. While the map may be too crude to use as a real one, it does tell me how many exits there are. None of them are the same as any map I've been though. Outside of 1 being like the area I enter the Dark World from...hang on. It might not be totally accurate, but 2 could be the maze I go through. I haven't tried to explore the Dark King's domain yet. It's total darkness!

What I think I might have to do is set up the lava lamps around the orb so that they aren't surrounded by the Dark Ones, because I'm guessing when all three are under attack, they enter and deactivate it, then go back to the portal and block me in. I also know that I can partially seal off the hole to the Dark World by using negative energy. None of these things actually help me right now, I need to do something else first.

2 and 5 could be the level I start on, therefore let's assume it's 2 to start with. It seems like a safe bet. That means that 3 is the level I'm stuck on. There are four other exits that aren't in the middle section, but that doesn't mean the middle section isn't useful. Hang on, I'm trying to destroy a control sphere, which is behind Midnight Blue/The Blue One and in front of the starfish on the ground. What if I try to shoot past them? Nothing happens and getting back feels more dangerous than coming here to begin with.

And then I try in vain to get past the Starfish again. At first I think they chase after affirmative energy, but it's just a trick of its behaviors. It just tended to move when I shot, and I perhaps hallucinated some kind of bending going on. I triple check that it isn't just my mind and with every kind of energy. So...to recap, I've tried every single option I can short of cheating and I still can't get anywhere, as this area has nothing beyond this small area I need to enter right now and a maze I'm 99% sure doesn't have anything else I can do in it. That leaves me one option, what if I'm wrong and I need to get an enemy behind the bars?

No. They stop a distance away from it, and obviously nothing's following me in. Going slowly does nothing, and that's all I got. I prepare myself for one final futile attempt at the Dark World before giving up. As I reload my save once again, just before the Dark Lord, I notice that the energy stream is green. Green, like affirmative energy. Yet there's none whenever I have to flee. So I try sealing the hole after walking into the Dark Lord? Well, I'm sure I'll have to figure out a way to get rid of his servants later, but we'll try that first.

It works, better than I expected. They just disappear. I can return to the Oracle, who just tells me to find the ghost of Mordaine, my first indication that there's any difference between Mordaine and the Adversary. I'm sure I would have found that out anyway, but it is helpful to have some idea of what I'm about to do. Speaking of things I don't know how to do, can you figure out that this has helped me zero with the starfish? I did cheat myself inifnite health in Game Conqueror, but that didn't help with getting past anything, instakills work past health.

So now I'm basically in a position where there is nothing else I can do but continue to try here. The maze here seems to have nothing, but I haven't been closely examining it, because there's been no reason to. Basically, play around with energy shooting at things that aren't shooting at me hoping that something happens. If somebody knows something about this game or can uncover something about it. That would be nice, but I suspect this one is going to go on the backburner for a few months, then unceremoniously get an entry bemoaning the difficulty of the game. I'm really not sure how to solve this one at this point, and I don't think I will be able to. I genuinely can't think of anything I haven't tried on level 3, and the Dark World is as solved as it can be.

Side note, I'm now on Bluesky, which will be more or less exactly what you expect from me, plus occasional musings on games that I'm not covering here or on TAG.

This Session: 3 hours 40 minutes

Total Time: 6 hours 40 minutes

Mazer II: Introduction

Mazer II is a weird game. I don't remember where I saw it, but the unplayed Mazer one is probably an actual maze game to my knowledge, something that's not within my concerns at the very least. It's very hard to find, bordering on impossible. The publisher, Big Red Computer Club didn't publish much, but it also put out a very neat looking Hercules beat 'em up I may or may not look at some day. I don't think the developer, Farfetch Software did much of note either, befitting this being an obscure game on an obscure platform.

But beyond those things, this is just really weird. It's a FPS on the Apple IIGS, released the same year as Wolfenstein 3D. All the boys at ID had Apple IIs. Just think, in another world Wolfenstein 3D could be the weird Apple IIGS game we talk about before going on about how cool Mike Howard is for inventing FPS games. Heck, it's halfway there, it's on IMDB for some reason. Which pops up next to the stuff I looked up for Rejection last time, which is one heck of a weird list.

Before I enter, I want to mention the computer briefly. I had no idea what to expect from the IIGS environment, I was expecting something like an Apple II, no, it's a color Macintosh before color Macintoshes. It's a Macintosh but it isn't one. I'm sure there's some technical stuff that makes it different, but I fail to understand why this wasn't just a color Macintosh. It's just a strange decision.

My first times playing and reading about the game are...weird. This is not exactly advertised as a FPS, more as a virtual world adventure game. One of the figures between Space Station Oblivion and Wolfenstein 3D. To start with, the game makes you, the player, the protagonist. No virtual avatar here. There are no real objectives, this is a lie, and the way the game controls is very dependent on the mouse.

You turn and move like your usual Wolf-clone, only exclusively on the mouse. Because we don't need keyboards...except to open the menu to save. Because this is an Apple computer, there's only one mouse button, and boy howdy, do I wish they used the keyboard. Because I'm on a regular computer using an emulator, right click screws around with the emulation processor speed, which the game needs at a specific speed or it'll go crazy. Left click does everything else.

You get four weapons, represented by different balls of light. Creative, destructive, affirmative and negative energy. Only destructive is an actual attack, the others are for conversation. Creative is also for conversation, but it has other purposes. You activate your "weapon" by just clicking, changing, you hold the mouse button down and move it around, with a blank option for dialog.

You're kind of in danger here, but amusingly, George and the Cat will just run around endlessly if you do nothing.

The game starts with the Cheshire Cat chasing around an invisible man, George, who asks for your help. Let me tell you, this is not an easy game to aim a weapon in. The Cat is a hard target to hit anyway, because he's invisible from behind...and you're really supposed to just walk up to him. Do this, he disappears and the invisible man offers to be your translator with the creatures of the world. Looking around, I gradually figure out how to not be in frustrating pain while moving and aiming, but only just.

You can, of course shoot them, but this results in you screwing yourself over. Also, there's no reason to shoot them.

Nearby are some colorful snails. It's tricky to talk to them, because it's not entirely clear how you open up a conversation. I think creative might be the key. The most colorful snail is the one to talk, explaining the backstory and my objective...

"Our troubles began with the arrival of the being we name the Adversary - a humanoid form. From whence it came we do not know, but we gave it welcome, for it greeted us with the old words of friendship, and appeared to seek only knowledge...
Yet even the living substance may be twisted to evil, though the source remain pure; for we discovered that our visitor was none other than Mordaine, a name of evil rumour out of distant past...
(George explains that this is a concise translation, the snails are into epic poetry)
Long ago, one Mordaine was the dread general of the Mazewar, rallying great forces to the call of darkness...
But before Mordaine could extend control over the Mazeworld, the Dark King appeared, draining the very energy of the living world...
Then all were afraid, for the Dark King could not be overcome, and he grew stronger as the Mazeworld plunged into darkness...
Indeed, none know the ending of the Mazewar, or how the Dark King was finally overcome, save that those cataclysmic days ended in the Sundering of the Ways, which divides the Mazeworld still. Since then, the world has been empty, devoid of both the old darkness and the old light; which so many had thought they could not see...
But now, Mordaine had returned, and demanded we reveal the way to the Dark Realm, which was supposedly was in our domain...
But even had we possessed the information Mordaine sought, that way may not be revealed. The Adversary became angered...
The Adversary threatened to bring a new enslaved army from the Outside, to destroy us if we did not reveal the way. We replied that our defenses were strong, and in any event we would die to the last before returning to the chaos of the Last Days...
Enraged, the Adversary promised to bend the very Maze itself, forging a path to bring the evil minions upon us. When we still did not yield, Mordaine began a terrifying work of magic...
But the living substance of the Mazeworld itself proved beyond Mordaine's art. Finally, frustrated beyond restraint and reason, Mordaine smote the very Maze wall with devastating force...
The Darkness flooded in, and with it unknown terrors of living shadow. But we stood transfixed, for Mordaine had become a figure of blinding light, shining into the darkness...
Then we were swept away by the assault of the creatures still cloaked in shadow. Only a handful escaped to the upper galleries. Some went to employ our final gambit of defense, but must have been lost. Only we three escaped to this forest...
Yet when we arrived, the four beacons were lit - someone must have departed to the outside levels. Perhaps Mordaine yet lives, and may yet bring about the final Conquest of the Mazeworld...
Could it be that you are sent to help us in this, our hour of need?
The amoeboids now patrol the upper level, and we fear even worse things lurk below. We are helpless to combat them..."

Then they ask me to clear out the way to an energy fountain for them. (well, the way to the upper levels, but the fountain is the objective) A short-term objective and a long-term objective. There's a story here, I don't know why the game implied there wasn't. Maybe it's very open-ended in how you can play it, but there's still a story. Feels to me like how one of those children's fantasy stories would go if the hero never showed up and the bad guy won. I like it.

The first of many lava lamps.

There's only one way out of this central forest, a pair of lava lamp-looking things. They're blocking my exit so I need to shoot them. I'm guessing these are some sort of fence. Use creative energy to open, then you can go through. This leads to, what else, but halls full of these amoebas. This is where the adventure part kicks in, you don't shoot them to kill them, you shoot them to get them away. You need to find out how they die and get rid of them. Especially since there's a big room full of them which don't move.

I guess it's hard to see these things in a screenshot compared to motion.

This, ironically enough, gives this section a survival horror-ish feel. There's no sound in this game, so if they sneak up on you, you're going to get a screen full of amoeba.  The first clue that there's something else you can do are more lava lamps, which the amoebas often get stuck on, but just wailing on them while they're in there is no good.

Then there are red lava lamps, these are exploding barrels. These will take out the amoeba, but there are a few problems. One, your destructive attack does a zig-zag, which throws my aim off in a game where I already don't understand the hitbox. Two, this is leaning on the no mercy side of adventure games, there's no way to get more and it's a long way to drag the amoeba. And this is the hallway to the fountain, my objective, which has the bonus of healing and restoring my ammo.

So I sit around in wait for the amoebas, then blowing up the red lava lamps on them. And it turns out that it really isn't that hard to handle, or even wait for. It's deceptively easy. Even without the fountain healing you. You just need to activate the lava lamps with two more more amoebas behind them and then get lucky with the red ones.

This results in something more boring, a long march for the snails to the fountain and then to the big room of amoeba. Only this time, if they touch an amoeba, the amoeba dies. At first I thought I should be close to a snail, but instead I just need to let them clear out the room, they aren't respawning. I just wait, and then the snails want to talk to me again.

The leader of the snails informs me that this is where we part, but to watch out for evil from all sides and a confrontation from the past. (Probably Mordaine) He tells me to consult the Oracle, which awaits me below. The path to the portal is clear and off I go.

Underhyping a threat like this is probably the best way to go, because if it isn't scary, you've lost nothing, if it is, people won't expect it.

The second level is full of hooded figures who are hostile to you and are immune to destructive energy. That's...great. This is playing out less like an early FPS and more like an early survival horror game. This is annoying me a lot less than a more modern game like it would. You can't kill these things, but the game isn't playing them up as some unkillable threat, they just are, and there's no obvious safe spots. Because there are no safe spots, even the suspicious overhead balls, as I discovered before dying. There's no lighting up the lava lamps here, either, they drain them away.

I wonder if I missed something here and should have done something on this floor instead of just leaving.

What you actually do is stumble upon the Oracle in the darkness, activating the two lava lamps in front, then getting your next objective, find the portal out, then stop the hole from the Darkworld into Mazeworld. The balls lit up, which combined with the Oracle telling me to distract the creatures leads me to believe they do something, but I'm safe enough dodging the hooded figures.

Level three is suspiciously empty. Too suspicious. What's here? Nothing, it's level one again. I hope I didn't do something wrong, because I don't really have any guidance at this point. Taking a gamble, I return to the forest, while I was screwing around, affirmative energy turned the pyramids light blue, so I do that and another portal opens up. I feel like I'm sequence breaking. Oh, well.

This leads to a maze with enemies I can actually shoot for once. Huzzah! It's both annoying and not annoying. Enemies move in the center of a tile, they don't move along the edges like you, and with enemies like these, who are all ranged, this means you can run by them. Combat is fairly interesting, even considering the handicap of using awkward mouse controls. Dodging isn't actually that bad and I can pull it off fairly easily. The real problem is the hitbox, I think they're smaller than the enemy, but I'm not quite sure.

After dying once, I discover my objective here, disable the control sphere, by someone who seems to be working with the Adversary. I really should just take him out, but I'm going to play it what I think should be the proper way. I just need to find the back way. I'll do things slowly, shooting monsters as I come across them...only, they respawn. I can't rush the area, because they get real thick with monsters. This is not helped by the emulator not having a proper mouselock function.

What I end up doing is finding a safe dead end, then saving my game. Enemies have a habit of ganging up on you and because of the way shooting works, fighting in a panic does not work in your favor. Only...this doesn't work, and I end up pinned down trying to recover all my health. It's like nightmare mode in Doom, only you're using the mouse exclusively and there's no practicing.

Eventually I make it to an area behind some bars. Bars that I can enter...but hopefully not the enemies. This leads straight into another problem, there are starfish on the ground which instakill me as soon as I enter. I can't run past it, although since it basically rushes at me, that might be intentional. I can't shoot it with any kind of energy, which isn't surprising at this point. There's clearly some trick to getting past this that I can't do yet.

The entire maze on this floor is all about reaching a star crossroad area leading to that area with the bars. I know there's a left and a right path from the start which leads here, but that leaves a fourth area with something else inside...and the fourth is just another entrance from the left path. Two paths from that side are connected. This leaves me pretty well stuck without also making a map. Oh, joy, making a map in an action game that was already fraught with danger. I have a few other options, check the second floor for a breach, and try to kill the guy who may or may not betray the Adversary.

"Four games left, should be easy, outside of the Singleton one." Yeah, that was a smart thing to say, but in my defense, I thought this was going to be some small and cute game, not a fantasy epic unrivaled in the world of FPS at the time. I'm not even sure I found the game this was a sequel to anymore. Generally speaking, the more novel systems like this one just haven't had much effort put into their originals.

That said, while I am digging this game so far, it is coming with drawbacks. Up until now I've never really experienced floppy failure, yet I've had this game's floppy bricked multiple times. I'm making sure to keep copies, but I am counting this against the game. Park this one firmly in the good for whoever it appeals to, and everyone should stay away kind of game.

This Session: 2 hours 00 minutes