Hysula - Peter Ward/Keysoft on PD 462
               (3D Construction Kit game for ST)

                  Reviewed by James Jillians

Hysula came with no instructions whatsoever, so the plot for this
game is obscure to say the least!  Here is what I managed to piece
together.  Apparently, you are Doctor Who (the blue police box was
a dead giveaway!) Being a time and space traveller, and naturally
curious, you have set off in your time-mobile to roam the 4th
dimension looking for adventure.  Anyway, you had just reached the
planet 'Hysula' (I assume the game's title is also the name of the
planet) when your time-capsule broke down, leaving you stranded on
a strange world, inhabited by the usual fairy-tale crowd of
princes, princesses, goblins and ogres.  The object of the game,
which I only discovered upon completing it, is to recover the
missing data disk which can provide the power to get your time-
mobile back home.

As the game progresses, you become entangled in the affairs of the
Hysulan royal family - almost as scandalous as the affairs of
others we know! You soon discover that the evil Queen has gone and
killed the King, and kidnapped his daughter, the beautiful
Princess. The young and handsome Prince Gilberath, who was in love
with the aforementioned Princess, has been blamed for the king's
murder and needs a bit of help sorting things out.  And who is on
hand? You guessed it!

The game has been created using the 3D Construction Kit.
Hysula's landscape is composed entirely of polygons and
polyhedrons which have been put together to form recognisable
objects.  The world can be viewed from many perspectives through
the Doctor's eyes.  Peter Ward has used the Kit's graphical
capabilities very well indeed, limited as they may be, and his
objects look surprisingly realistic. The non-player characters
that you meet, such as the orc and the peasant-farmer, have been
made to look cartoony and amusing.


The game mostly involves puzzle-solving and exploring.
Unfortunately, these two aspects are very disappointing.  The
puzzles are far too easy and there aren't enough of them.
Basically, they involve picking up the right item and then
selecting the right place or person to use them on. The characters
you meet practically tell you what they want you to give them, and
solving the game is just a question of collecting the items in the
right order. As for exploration, you can just follow the pathways!
There is no maze element incorporated into the game so it is
impossible to get lost.  If you forget where you are you can just
read the conveniently placed sign-posts.  I'm afraid the game
presents no challenge whatsoever.  I completed it after
approximately three hours of play, and I'm no expert adventurer!

Sound? So that's what you call it. To be honest, a hard-of-hearing
caveman could have made a better job of it. Be it the fault of the
programmer or because you can't produce good quality sound using
3D Construction Kit, it is certainly very poor!  The sound (or
shall I call it the noise?) consists of a totally un-door-like
door-opening sound (have you ever heard a door make a slamming
noise when you open it?) and a noise which is made by the
monsters.  This would be fine and dandy except for the fact that
the sound has come straight out of the wrong era. The dragon (from
medieval times!) makes a totally mechanical-sounding siren noise.
Peter Ward obviously, a) hasn't done his research very well, b)
can't change the sound because that is beyond the capabilities of
3DCK or c) has a hearing loss.

The game's control system is a bit difficult to use at first.  For
a start there are no arrows on the direction box, so figuring out
which part of the box does what is a matter of trial and error.
The inventory is a bit awkward too - can you imagine a Doctor Who
(or any other Time Lord for that matter) who can only carry one
thing at a time?  Anyway if you get over this frustration you have
to cope with the fact that any object you do pick up cannot be
dropped.  If you pick up another object the object that you
originally were carrying vanishes completely, never to be
recovered!  Fortunately, there are only a few objects that are
pick-up-able anyway and there are no red herrings, placed for the
sheer hell of it, so this doesn't become a major crisis.

Despite all I have said, the game was quite good fun to play while
it lasted. There is a good plot and the game's characters are very
amusing.  The graphics are rather good too, considering the number
of different view-points you can view the landscape from.
Unfortunately the game is too easy, so I would only really
recommend it to beginners, or people who want to see a good
example of a 3D Construction Game which they could base their
games on.  The sound (which isn't a very important part of an
adventure game, anyway, in my opinion) is worse than awful so
don't expect your ears to thrill with the world of medieval
noises!

The game requires a mouse to run but not a joystick.  3D
Construction Kit is not needed to use the game.

N.B.  You should be able to send off for a copy of an extra little
story and a poster of the beautiful Evil Queen (phwoar!!) but I'm
damned if I can find an address to send the order to anywhere on
the disk!

J.J. Ratings:

GRAPHICS   : 7 out of 10
SOUND      : 0.00001 out of 10
EASE OF USE: 4 out of 10
VALUE      : 6 out of 10
DIFFICULTY : 3 out of 10
FUN FACTOR : 5 out of 10