Game 490: Ambermoon (1993)

 

         

Ambermoon

Germany

Thalion Software (developer and publisher) 

Released 1993 for Amiga

Date Started: 28 March 2023

    

Amberstar ended with the victorious party defeating the evil wizards and preventing the return of the demon/wizard Tarbos. But as the heroes celebrated their victory, they wondered: "Why does Lyramion's third moon glow evilly, with a blood red light?"

        

Could they not have made it glow with an amber light?

     

The backstory to this sequel, along with the introductory cinematic, answer the question: Tarbos had done something to mess with the moon, nudging it out of its orbit. It took 40 years, but eventually the satellite came crashing down to the surface, obliterating most of the cities. In the cinematic, the camera follows a chunk of the moon approaching Lyramion as a tune reminiscent of the Jaws theme plays in the background. The player is then treated to the sight of meteors laying waste to each of the major cities from Amberstar. That's a grim way to begin a game.

   

By now, the backstory informs us, the hero of Amberstar had retired, fathered a daughter, and enjoyed the birth of his first grandchild. (The hero of Amberstar could be either sex, but apparently was canonically male.) The family lived in Twinlake (the starting city in Amberstar), and in the rubble following its destruction, the hero found his grandchild but not his daughter. He raised the child on his own as civilization slowly rebuilt itself. As the game begins, the original hero is 80 and has sent his grandchild--the player character--on a mission to "find out what is happening on the Island of Lyramion and what risks there are to you and life on Lyramion." It's hard to imagine there are risks any worse than the entire planet being destroyed by meteors, but I guess we'll see.

      

Glad I spent all that time solving side quests here.

       

The intro is a bit confused, I should note. It starts "20 years after the events of Amberstar," depicts the broken pieces of the moon laying waste to the cities, and then says "70 years later . . ." to introduce the game. But the backstory makes it clear that the hero didn't even settle down until 20 years after Amberstar, then had a daughter who grew to adulthood, got married, and had her own child before the meteors fell. It also makes it clear that the original hero is 80 as this game begins. Thus, the title cards in the cinematic should read more like "40 years after the events of Amberstar" and "20 years later" for the period after the destruction. To make matters worse, the PC's age in the character sheet is given as 17, which doesn't fit any of the timelines provided. She should be 20 or, I suppose, 70.

     

You've got to assign someone on the team to continuity.

             

The only choices you have for character creation are sex and portrait. There are a few notable things here. The first is that the developers were a bit lazy: most of the portraits are very slight modifications of each other. I suppose it makes sense if they're all supposed to be children of the same parents. Second, in an era that often lacked racial inclusion, it's notable here that all of the female portraits could be construed as Black. Third, one of the male portraits depicts a person clearly quite older than the rest.

     

At least one of these people is not 17.

       

The game begins with the PC's grandfather on his deathbed. He summons the PC over and reveals that he was the hero who saved Lyramion however many years ago; apparently, the PC has heard this story but didn't know her grandfather's role. Grandpa says that Shandra (the wizard from Twinlake in Amberstar) appeared in his dreams and told him that a new evil was arising and that the PC would need to fight it. This is particularly odd because Shandra died during the meteor attack on Twinlake, having exhausted himself teleporting townsfolk to safety. Grandpa suggests going to Newlake (apparently the replacement for the destroyed Twinlake) to try to commune with Shandra's spirit. He gives a password (WINE) to a secret cave accessible through the basement of his house, encouraging the PC to "use everything you find there" but asking her to bring him a small piece of amber. Admonishing the PC to hurry, as he will soon "enter the realms of Bala," he collapses back on his bed.

      

A cut scene starts the dialogue . . .

 

. . . which continues in the dialogue window.

      

The main interface hasn't changed notably since the first game. The layout is identical. Party members' portraits line the top row. An exploration screen is on the left. It alters between an axonometric view (angled slightly on one axis, so it looks as if you're looking at an angle from the south) and a first-person view depending on what you're exploring. The right third of the screen has a message window at the top and an icon panel at the bottom; a right-click of the mouse alters between a movement panel and an action panel, with options to look, touch, talk, board transportation, use magic, camp, view the map, change battle positions, and view the game options (including saving and loading). I had hoped that the authors would have mapped these options to sensible keyboard commands (e.g., "T" for "Talk"), but alas the letters on the keyboard don't seem to do anything at all. You can activate the icons with the numberpad, though. Ever since I bought my new Alienware laptop, I've been grousing that it doesn't have a numberpad, so I had to buy an external one. For the first time, I'm grateful for an external pad over a built-in pad, as I can move it to where my left hand can use it, leaving my right hand on the mouse. If that gets annoying, I'll map the icons to the keys I want in the emulator settings.

        

Sent on a vital mission, the dying man's granddaughter instead bonks her head by walking into a fireplace. The old man shakes his head sadly.

        

The graphics are somewhat improved from Amberstar, though mostly because they're larger and thus show more detail. The icon for the PC is maybe four times the size as in the original game; furnishings are maybe twice as big. Somehow, the authors manage to achieve the larger icons without changing the number of visible tiles (9 x 9), partly by removing what in the first game was an excess of floor space in most of the interior areas. Most other changes, at least so far, are minor and cosmetic.

    

I spend some time exploring the house and familiarizing myself with the commands. The interface is partly inspired by Ultima V in the way that the character icon changes when you, for instance, move over a chair or bed. The world isn't quite as interactive, but there are some fun if pointless touches. Clicking on barrels of water next to fireplaces, for instance, causes you to douse the fires, after which you can walk into the fireplace, one of which hides a secret stairway. Generally speaking, though, there are only a few interactive objects out of many that look like they might be interactive. I was hoping the eye icon would reveal more descriptions, like in a Quest for Glory game, but I was disappointed.

        

Heading downstairs.

      

The PC starts naked as a Level 1 human "Adventurer," aged 17, with 10 hit points and 8 spell points. Attributes are out of 50: strength (33), intelligence (27), dexterity (34), speed (21), stamina (48), charisma (41), luck (16), and anti-magic (0). Her skills are attack (42/80), parry (19/75), swimming (1/95), critical hits (0/0), find traps (0/25), disarm traps (0/25), pick locks (0/25), search (0/25), read magic (23/50), and use magic (27/50). I verified that all these statistics are the same for a male character.

   

A chest in my room reveals 37 gold coins, two lockpicks, and a rope. My dresser has a hat, clothes, and sandals. A hutch in the dining room yields some silver cutlery. A cabinet in the kitchen has two knives, a dagger, and 15 rations. There are more rations, plus 5 torches, in barrels in the pantry. I equip the equippable items using the paperdoll inventory screen, noting that the "view item" command gives you a full set of statistics associated with each object. You don't need to view these statistics to see the immediate effects of equipped items on attack and defense power, which are offered under the character portrait.

       

The inventory screen.

       

This weapon statistics screen gives me a preview of the classes that the game will offer: adventurer, warrior, paladin, thief, ranger, healer, alchemist, mystic, and mage. You may recall that the character in Amberstar starts as nothing and has to choose his class when he finds the appropriate guild. Here, where the character explicitly starts as an "adventurer," I'm not sure if I'll have the same options to change. Gone are the classes of monk, white wizard, grey wizard, and black wizard, but I assume the four new classes here are rough analogs.

     

Thus equipped, I head down to the basement. A title card transitions the scene, noting that I hear squeaking as I enter. The basement is present in a first-person interface, and almost immediately I notice an interface change that swiftly becomes unwelcome. Perhaps inspired by Ultima Underworld or Legends of Valour (both from 1992), the developers chose to ditch tiled movement and crisp 90-degree turns for continuous movement and turning. There's nothing inherently wrong with this except that it's excruciatingly slow and, so far, not terribly necessary, since unlike Underworld, the dungeon doesn't offer a level of interactivity that requires such refined movement. The textures are nice, though. 

       

The well room with no floor and ceiling textures.

     

There are options to turn on textures for the floor and ceiling, but this just makes movement that was already maddeningly slow completely unplayable. I played with WinUAE's CPU speed options but couldn't find anything that made it faster except to kick it into "warp" mode, which is too fast, causes torches to blink out in an instant, and causes the character to tire quickly. Suggestions are appreciated because this is going to be a real problem. I'm emulating an A1200 with a 68040 CPU, AGA chipset, 2 MB RAM, JIT enabled. CPU emulation speed set to "fastest possible."

      

The same room with floor and ceiling textures.

      

(Unlike its predecessor, Ambermoon was released only for the Amiga; Thalion went out of business while planned DOS and Atari ST versions were still in development. My understanding is that it was only officially released in German, so I'm not entirely sure what the provenance is of the English translation I'm playing, but I'll try to research that for a later entry.)

      

The last time I went house shopping, I viewed some old houses with wells in basements. They always scared the hell out of me.

      

There are spiders crawling along the ceilings and floors, but they seem to be decorative, as they don't attack. I come to a well. I look into it and a pond lizard comes leaping out, sending me into the first combat of the game. Not much seems to have changed from Amberstar--you still face enemies on a 6 x 5 grid--but let me cover combat in a later entry after I've had some more experience. There's a "fast combat" option that I need to explore, as regular combat is unnecessarily bogged down with animations that take a long time. The lizard and I miss each other for about five rounds before I finally kill it, having taken five points of damage. I get 10 experience points and 2 rations.

       

The top half of the screen is just for aesthetics. I wish the "quick combat" option stripped the interface down to the grid and the messages.

      

There are some round items in the corner of the well room, but I can't figure out any way to pick them up. The "touch" and "look" interface options don't seem to do anything.

      

What are these all about?

    

A couple of rooms later, I'm killed by a giant spider.

      

I hope grandpa dies before he realizes he's sent me to my own death.

     

Unfortunately, that's about all I have time for right now, but when I reload back in grandpa's house, I think I'll try the secret area before going down into the cellar. I'm looking forward to the game and seeing where the plot goes, but I'm at the tail end of a crazy week and it was tough to even get this much done for tonight.

    

Time so far: 1 hour