Prince and the Coward, aka Galador, has a very interesting history at Just Adventure. We received this game almost 2 years ago, but could not review it until Michal, who is fluent in German, joined our staff. I spoke with the Polish developers of this old-fashioned point-and-click adventure game and asked if they had any plans to translate Prince and the Coward into English for North American distribution and their response was that they were quite happy with the reception that their game had received in the European countries and had no wish for further distribution.

We hope you enjoy Michal Necasek's review of this rare adventure game patterned after the classic Lucas Arts classics.

Galador is a fun adventure game and not serious at all. It is also not available in English which severely limits its audience, especially in North America. I played the German version although the game was originally created by a team of Polish programmers and artists (hence I assume that a Polish version exists too).

The game is set in a fantasy world with kings, princes, princesses, demons, dragons, vampires and so on - the usual cast of characters. Once upon a time there was a kingdom... but you've heard all that many times before. To cut the long story short, in this kingdom lived a prince named Galador. Now you probably think, "Aha, so prince Galador must be the hero of the game". Well, yes and no. Galador is not an ordinary game and prince Galador is not quite its hero. Explaining how that is possible is naturally not easy.

When the game starts, the ancient and famous magician Arivald will explain to you why prince Galador is not really the main character of Galador the game. But now the story gets even more complicated. You see, Arivald was a famous magician - about thousand years ago. On the game CD there is even a short story detailing one of Arivald's adventures (a PDF document). The story is by the way certainly worth even if it is only very loosely connected to the game.

But all that was a long long time ago. Arivald has been long dead, resting in his velvet-lined coffin (a present from the Guild of brewers to their best customer). But we're talking about a magical kingdom here and even death is not necessarily final. Arivald had the immense luck (or misfortune, depending on how you look at it) to have been resurrected after about thousand years. And thus it is possible that Arivald will now tell you the story of prince Galador.

In the kingdom there lived a young man. His name is unimportant and in fact probably unknown. He wasn't outstanding in any way and was interested in getting rich/famous/powerful with the minimum amount of effort (who isn't?). An opportunity presented itself with the arrival of certain enterprising demon who offered this young man to fulfil his wishes for the usual price, with contract signed in blood.

What the demon didn't tell the young man however is how exactly this would be accomplished. The young man's soul would be simply transported into the body of prince Galador and prince's soul would go straight to Hell. This kind of thing however was illegal even in Hell. Nevertheless, the demon wasn't afraid to break the laws of Hell and effected the change, causing all hell to break loose in the said kingdom.

Our nameless hero now finds himself in prince Galador's body. Whether that is now still prince Galador is open to interpretation but to keep things simple I will refer to him as Galador. Unfortunately for the young man, the body swap occurred at the most inopportune moment - Galador was just facing the famous and feared Black Knight in battle. Quickly evaluating his options, Galador decided to take the one course of action not likely to severely reduce his life expectancy - run away. Sadly, Galador's royal father had no understanding for this completely sensible behavior and banished Galador (that's fatherly love for you).

And this is where the actual game starts and you take over as Galador. After fleeing from combat Galador is now in an old graveyard (of all places) where he meets a suspicious looking grave digger. The grave digger seems to know a bit about magic and wants to resurrect one of the graveyard's long-term tenants (don't ask me why) - and fortunately for Galador, manages to revive the magician Arivald mentioned above. Arivald is not adverse to helping Galador but first needs to quench his thirst (after thousand years it's no wonder he's a bit parched, you'd be too) and will be found in a tavern for most of the rest of the game. But even between tankards of beer, Arivald will indeed help Galador on several occasions.

Galador's immediate task is now to explore the kingdom. The royal castle is off limits to Galador for the moment but there is a town not far away and most of its inhabitants do not care about Galador's banishment. Galador's ultimate goal is to go to Hell (I said this was an unorthodox game) and get back his old body. Here you can see that Galador is not a typical adventure game - the hero's (if he is a hero at all, which is not so certain) objective is not to save the world or the kingdom, just himself. On the other hand this sounds a lot more realistic than the typical adventure (if you forget the bit about Hell, magic etc.).

Some inhabitants of the kingdom will help Galador but others - for instance the Prince of Vampires, a fiery dragon, devils or an angry dwarf - will not, or at least not voluntarily. Fortunately Galador can't be killed (except by deleting the game from your harddrive as the manual states) and in the worst case he will run away - one of his most valuable skills apparently.

During the course of his quests Galador will meet a strong headed and sharp tongued young woman who seems to detest all men but because she too holds a grudge against Hell, she will temporarily pool forces with Galador in an effort to get there. The woman is wearing a mask and won't reveal her identity to Galador until near the end, although it is known that she is a princess of some description. If Galador plays his cards right, she might even get to like him.

And now let's take a look at the game mechanics of Galador. The interface is classic point and click. Left mouse button walks, right button pops up a menu on objects. The menu contains several available commands (Get, Open, Push etc.) but usually only few of them will actually do something. Moving the mouse to the top edge of the screen brings up the inventory.

Traveling in the kingdom is aided by a magical map, a present from the wizard Arivald. Unfortunately the map is a bit worn out and doesn't initially show the entire kingdom - most locations will only appear on the map after someone tells you about them. And when you finally get to Hell, the map will not function at all - which is not too surprising after all. Who needs a map of Hell anyway.

At the beginning of the game there is a fairly large amount of conversation. Interestingly, it is usually not possible to exhaust all dialog options - when you choose one path, most other paths will no longer be available. This has however no real effect on the outcome. I found many of the dialogs pretty funny, although the humor is often a little twisted (but I like that).

The puzzles are almost all inventory based. Unfortunately some of them are not very logical and hence difficult to solve (and still puzzling even after you know the correct solution). But most of the puzzles are okay. What I didn't much like were several action sequences requiring really fast fingers - more than I consider to be appropriate for an adventure game. Fortunately there were only two or three of these sequences.

The graphics are cartoon-style hand drawn which I did find very appropriate for this kind of game. The art isn't breathtaking but it isn't bad either. There is MIDI style music (not very noticeable) and of course full voice overs with optional subtitles - everything in German naturally. As a non-native speaker of German, I do not feel competent to judge the quality of the voiceovers (I thought they weren't too bad, but I could be wrong).

Galador feels a little like the Monkey Island series - you play it for fun, not because it has stunning graphics or great puzzles or breathtaking story. But that's perfectly okay with me and from time to time it's good to play a game that's not even a little serious. It's just a game after all!

And now it is time to judge the pros and cons of Galador. This game gets a B+ from me. The art is average, not bad but not great. The puzzles are about average as well, many of them easy but some not logical at all. The story is decidedly unusual, convoluted and interesting. But above all, the game is fun to play!
 

Final Grade: B+

System Requirements:

WIN95/98
P75
90 MB RAM
SVGA
4X CDROM
Sound card