Preview: Schizm
Developer: LK Avalon
Publisher: Project Two Interactive
Release Date: Second Quarter 2000
Platform:
Just Adventure was the only site at the E3 to have the honor to be invited to a private screening of LK Avalon’s new game, Schizm. At the time, only an unplayable demo was available. We have since been provided with further information on this intriguing game and can now offer the background story and some of the play mechanics as provided by the game developer:
“A space cargo vessel has serious problems on its journey and goes down on an unknown planet. The crew is advised to abandon ship in life saving capsules and land on the planet’s surface which is currently inhabited by several not very populated colonies. After landing in three different and distant places on the planet, the survivors quickly establish contact and it turns out that all three of them are alive despite the disappearance of one capsule. Because none of the survivors had plans to spend vacation on that planet therefore they are very interested in leaving it as quickly as possible. One of the characters explains the rest that he is in some advanced part of the planet, sees a lot of ship’s wrecks and this is really promising prospect of finding the way of getting out of the planet … but will it be that easy??
“Schizm offers a mix of puzzles of varied type, including mechanical, logical, sound and inventory based, seamlessly integrated with the story, appealing to everyone, from newcomers to the field to die-hard adventure gamers. The story itself unfolds as an intriguing puzzle waiting to be solved.
“The player simultaneously controls two protagonists, who can explore the game independently, further expanding the game’s non-linearity and freeing the player from the annoying situation of being stuck at a particular puzzle. Both protagonists can solve puzzles independently, but their cooperation is required at certain points in the game. The story involves interaction with several live characters and information interchange between the protagonists. The player won’t feel left alone on a deserted planet. Distinctive environments where the action takes place, both indoors and outdoors, created by gifted individual artists–floating balloon towns, mysterious underground locations, abandoned industrial cities, sea-floating organic spaceships.
“V-Cruise engine (used previously in Reah) allows for an immersive experience and ultra-smooth, fast and effective navigation between hundreds of locations. The engine provides full 360 degree panoramic views in all locations and background animations in most of them, with occasional up and down glimpses and zooms. The way the player’s point of view is handled greatly enhances the feel of immersion in a truly three dimensional world. The navigation is entirely controlled by mouse movement, with one mouse button giving the player intuitive and smooth control similar to real-time rendered games combined with the highest quality of prerendered graphics.“The game is designed to be delivered on DVD and take advantage of the large capacity and improved speed of this new technology. The classic CDROM version will be a scaled down version of this DVD original. We won’t be simply transferring or enhancing the CDROM version.”
Just Adventure will be sure to track the progress of this game for our readers. If you are already a fan of Liath and Reah, then Schizm is sure to be must-have for your adventure collection.
Update 6/18/99
Christian Fischer of the JA staff spoke with Maciej Miasik recently and asked the creator of Reah and co-creator of the upcoming Schizm the following:
“Are you planning to improve the main drawback of Reah: the lack of integration of the puzzles not sufficiently linked to the plot?”
Mr. Miasik’s gracious response:
“I have to admit that we have learned our lesson with Reah and we want the next game to improve most of the ‘less than perfect’ areas of the previous title.
“Although Schizm will be a puzzle-oriented adventure game as well (also referred as ‘Myst clone’), we are improving the adventure part of the game. First of all, Schizm will feature a quite original story which unfolds while the game is being played–actually the story will be a sort of puzzle itself, and everything the player does in the game, including puzzle solving, will lead to discovering the great mystery. The puzzles won’t be just puzzles for the sake of puzzles, but they will be the obstacles which the player has to pass in order to discover that great mystery. We tried to integrate the puzzles with story as much as we could–it wasn’t possible in all cases though, this is still a puzzle adventure, not a storytelling.
“Currently we are talking with a well-known Australian sci-fi writer, and I do hope that he will help us in polishing up the story, creating great characters and writing dialogues for them.
“Anyway, you should expect the really interesting plot, the puzzles well integrated with the environments, variety of live characters, highly nonlinear gameplay, breathtaking graphics delivered in every detail thanks to licensed MJPEG codec.
“I plan to supply Just Adventure with bunch of exclusive screen shots very soon.”
