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