Ceremony of Innocence is quite unlike anything I have ever played
before, and I find myself at a loss for how to begin this review. I guess I will
take the pragmatic approach and just describe it.

Ceremony of Innocence
is not really a game, adventure or otherwise. Rather, it is a piece of interactive
fiction, in the literal sense of the phrase. It is based on the Griffin and Sabine
trilogy of illustrated epistolary novels by Nick Bantock. The story unfolds in
three parts, and it is presented through an exchange of postcards and letters
between Sabine Strohem, who lives on an obscure island chain in the South Pacific,
and Griffin Moss in England, both artists. Sabine writes to Griffin as if she
already knows him, and he, puzzled, inquires as to whether he should know her.
You soon come to find out that Sabine can “see” Griffin’s artwork as
he draws it and only now finds out who he is, and they begin a regular correspondence
and come to fall in love with each other. This is one story that is best left
to the player (or reader) to discover and interpret for her/himself, so I will
leave it at that. I will say that it takes some bizarre twists along the way.

The
story unfolds, as I said, through Sabine and Griffin’s exchange of letters. You
are presented with a picture, and you must figure out how to get at the text inside,
or on the other side in the case of the postcards. Sometimes you can do so simply
by moving your mouse or clicking on part of the picture; sometimes you get a cursor,
sometimes you don’t; and sometimes it is downright puzzling to figure out what
you need to do. Therein lies the only part of the software that can be called
a “game.” The postcards and envelopes are all a feast for the eyes,
with beautiful, quirky, whimsical animations, and the pictures impart the emotions
that will appear in the letter or foreshadow things to come.

The voice acting
(“reading” in this case) is superb. Paul McGann plays the part of Griffin,
and Isabella Rossellini is Sabine. There is a third character later on, voiced
by Ben Kingsley. All three of them made me fully believe in their characters.
The music is also very, very well-done. Every aspect of the game perfectly meshes
to create an immersive experience, in fact, a work of art.

Unlike so many
games, Ceremony of Innocence is one title that will linger in my imagination
for a long time to come. So much is left open to interpretation that it bears
mulling over, and yet the story is complete. For me, playing this CD was a magical,
mysterious experience, and I look forward to reading Nick Bantock’s printed trilogy.

Final
Grade: A

If you liked Ceremony of Innocence:
Watch: A
Room with a View
Read: The Griffin and Sabine Trilogy by Nick Bantock
Play: Blue Ice

System Requirements:

PC: Windows
95
Pentium
16 MB RAM
16-bit color graphics at 640×480 resolution

2x CD-ROM drive
Quicktime 2.1 (included)
RSX and DirectX (included)

Sound Blaster 16 or compatible sound card
Headphones or speakers

Mac:

PowerPC
16 MB RAM
2x CD-ROM drive
System 7.1 or greater
16-bit
audio card
16-bit color graphics at 640×480 resolution
Quicktime 2.5 (included)

Headphones or speakers