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.”
