| Review
Wisdom
Quest
Review by Sudeep Pasricha
June 22, 2006 |
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 Wisdom
Quest is the second title in the Journey
to Wild Divine trilogy of games, billed as promoting
“meditation training for the mind and body”. I reviewed
the first game in the series, The
Passage, a while ago, and was very impressed with
the use of biofeedback to solve quests and progress in the game. The
Passage taught breathing and meditation techniques through
its many quests, which I found to perceptibly help reduce stress and
achieve a more relaxed state of mind. So it was with great anticipation
that I started playing the next title in the trilogy.
 I
might as well get this out of the way right at the beginning: Wisdom
Quest does not come bundled with the biofeedback hardware
which is a prerequisite for playing it. To get the biofeedback equipment,
you will have to purchase the first game in the series, The
Passage, which at about $150 doesn’t come cheap
(although it has sold over 50,000 copies despite the price). Wisdom
Quest also assumes some knowledge of the skills and
techniques taught in the first game, and you will most certainly find
it harder to complete the quests in this game if you haven’t
played The Passage.
 In
its essence, Wisdom Quest is a Myst-like
adventure game, set in a realm of imposing mountainous landscapes,
majestic palaces, gorgeous temples, enchanting pools and an abundance
of enlightened gurus. The game is based on a loose plot to locate
seven precious stones that will heal and restore peace in the Sun
Realm, and presents you with a series of tasks that you must complete
in order to succeed with your objective. What’s different here
is that a majority of the quests in the game are completed not by
solving brain wracking puzzles or finding/using/combing inventory
items alone, but by regulating your body’s rhythm and energy
level. The biofeedback equipment used by this game consists of sensors
which hook onto three fingers of one of your hands, while the other
controls the mouse to navigate and interact with objects on the screen.
These sensors detect your heart rate and skin conductivity levels
to determine your energy level, based on whether you’re feeling
stressed, anxious, relaxed or excited. To succeed in Wisdom
Quest, you will need to learn how to regulate your energy
level, lowering it to become more relaxed, raising it to feel more
excited, or a combination of these two extremes. The Passage
taught several breathing techniques for this purpose.
Wisdom Quest builds upon these, and presents more advanced
techniques to enable you to achieve the level of calmness and relaxation
required to complete the quests in the game.
 Much
like The Passage, there are several biofeedback
based activities in this game. Many of these are essential to complete
the game, but a few are just there to help you relax, or train you
for harder activities later in the game. Several of these activities
will require you to lower your energy level. For instance, one such
activity requires you to drain a pool of water and reveal a secret
passage. The calmer you become, the lower the water level gets. Another
activity requires you to gain the trust of a sacred serpent which
is guarding a precious stone. As you become more relaxed, the serpent
gradually lowers itself into a basket. Once it is safely tucked away
in the basket, you can grab the stone and move on.
 Other
biofeedback activities will require you to raise your energy level.
This is typically easier to do than activities requiring you to relax,
by breathing vigorously, laughing out loud or yelling like Tarzan.
One such activity requires you to open a treasure chest, with the
force of your energy. Another requires you to repair a footbridge,
by raising and then maintaining your elevated energy level. If you
do so successfully, the footbridge planks will begin to repair themselves.
Once the bridge is complete, you will be able to cross it and take
a ride on a hot air balloon as your reward.
 A
lot of the activities in Wisdom Quest are
of the more advanced type, which will require you to either gradually
or rapidly vary your energy level. One such activity requires you
to navigate a golden stone through a crystal maze. You must raise
your energy to get the stone to go vertically upwards and lower it
to make it descend, as it moves in a horizontal direction. Not only
must you vary your energy level in rapid succession, you must also
figure out which path leads out of the maze while you’re doing
so. An even harder activity involves taking a dolphin to one end of
a pool by lowering your energy, and then rapidly raising your energy
to make it swim to the other end and jump through an open gate. This
had to be done several times in succession for all the dolphins in
the pool. These advanced biofeedback activities have been specially
designed to teach you to effectively control your energy levels.
 To
successfully navigate the more challenging of these biofeedback activities,
Wisdom Quest teaches in-depth meditation
and breathing techniques. The Tibetan monk from The Passage
makes an appearance again, and sits at the lower right hand corner
of the screen, guiding you through the activities at the click of
a mouse. There is also a butterfly which appears at the bottom of
the screen, beating its wings rhythmically to guide the tempo of your
breathing for some of the activities. And time and again, a magical
fairy will pop out of thin air to give you some much needed hints
if you get stuck.
 Wisdom
Quest has tied up with Deepak Chopra, the new age guru,
who makes several appearances in the game, to give insights from his
latest New York Times Bestseller, “The Book of Secrets”.
There are also several other characters that appear throughout the
game, some of whom were also present in The Passage,
to teach you new activities and skills, or offer discourses on spirituality
and new-age philosophy. The gorgeous graphics, soothing background
music and sound effects in the environment blend seamlessly together
to create a tranquil atmosphere, which you will want to return to
again and again.
 So
how does Wisdom Quest fare compared to its
predecessor, The Passage? While the look
and feel of the new installment is quite similar to that of the original,
there are several subtle enhancements. In fact, it seems that almost
every issue that irked me when I played The Passage
has been addressed in this sequel. The graphics engine uses QuickTimeVR
features to now allow you a 360 degree view of your surroundings.
The lengthy motion animation sequences which are triggered every time
you move to a new destination can now mercifully be interrupted with
a click of the mouse. The MAP feature has also been enhanced, so that
now you can click on the map to be transported to any previously visited
location. This is light years better than the scheme used in
The Passage, which limited you to being transported
to a maximum of two bookmarked locations.
 One
of the biggest improvements is the inclusion of several difficulty
levels. The Journey to Wild Divine series
of biofeedback adventures are not by any means easy to plough through.
Some of the activities can require an extraordinary amount of patience
as you learn to regulate your energy levels. While the learning curve
is not really all that steep, some of the more advanced activities
can be fairly challenging. The choice of difficulty levels, which
can be switched at any time during the game, allows a convenient way
to overcome particularly difficult activities, and keep you moving
in the game. Another very welcome feature in Wisdom Quest
is the Guided Activity mode, in addition to the normal Quest mode.
The Guided Activity mode allows you to select and play through several
of the biofeedback activities (there are a total of 20 included in
this mode) from the Quest mode. Included with the game is a booklet
which describes the activities in the Guided Activity mode, and tells
you how they can be useful to you. I found this an extremely useful
feature, since I often returned to replay several of the biofeedback
activities to relax and unwind.
 That
is not to say that I did not have any complaints about the game. Some
of the new-age video clips from the game were vague and nebulous,
seemingly the product of an extremely spaced out mind. I was left
scratching my head after viewing some of the clips, wondering whether
there was any meaningful message that I failed to latch on to. I also
felt that some of video clips of the characters were quite inexpertly
spliced together. Then there’s the save game interface, which
makes use of an ugly windows dialog box. I doubt it would have been
too hard to create an integrated save game interface, consistent with
the look and feel of the rest of the game. Finally, I had expected
the graphics from The Passage to be completely
overhauled for Wisdom Quest. They are definitely
better, but still nowhere near as good as a majority of the games
that have been released of late.
 To
wrap up, despite all my criticism, Wisdom Quest
does manage to make several improvements over the first game, providing
a deeper, more meaningful experience. There is much more to explore
and a greater variety of biofeedback activities, than what The
Passage had to offer. The game creates an immensely
serene environment for you to relax and learn skills which will help
you to alleviate stress and anxiety from your everyday life. If you
bought The Passage and liked it, you will
definitely enjoy Wisdom Quest. For those
of you who are still to play the first game, might I recommend glancing
through my review of The Passage to help
make up your mind?
   
 
Final Grade: A
(find
out more about our grading system)
System Requirements:
- Biofeedback Hardware
(available with The Journey to Wild Divine: The Passage)
- Available USB port (for biofeedback hardware)
- 1.5 GB of Disk Space
- 256 MB RAM
- 800x600 screen resolution
- SoundBlaster or compatible sound card and speakers
- QuickTime 6.5 or higher
PC
- Windows 2000/XP
- Intel Pentium III, 800 MHz processor or higher
- CD-ROM drive
Macintosh
- G4 or higher, running at 800 MHz or more
- OS-X v10.2.6 or later
- DVD drive
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