This unique game takes me back to when graphic animated adventures
were very popular. The graphics remind me of those graphics and the
pixel hunts of those games. This is a good thing; since many people,
including me, loved and still
love animated graphic adventures.

The interface is what makes the game so much like these animated
graphic adventures. When the avatar starts out, she is on a side
scrolling sort of map and you move from the tent to the right where
you meet up with one of her adventuring team. The scene scrolls right
further to reveal the leader of your team and the first battle.

The protagonist can move anywhere in the three dimensional scene
with cursor keys controlling movement. The mouse is only used in
battle and when items in the environment are located by moving next
to them with the cursor keys.

The mouse is an alternative to the enter key when an action in the
environment is required. When you curse over to the exact spot where
a screen pops up or a very small, even miniscule, icon appears next
to the item, the mouse or enter key activates the item so that the
protagonist can interact with it.

The protagonist is our heroine, Agavean, who is part of a small
adventuring group. In the beginning cinematic the adventuring group
finds a large chest of gold coins reminiscent of the chest of gold
coins from the recent Pirates of the Caribbean movie. The adventurers
drink, dance and celebrate because they have finally found some worthwhile
treasure. After the revelry the adventurers fall asleep except for
two members of the group who steal off with the chest of coins and
a jeweled pendant that Agavean is wearing around her neck.

Your mission, should you accept it, is to help Agavean find the
thieves who stole the chest of gold coins and the magic pendant.
Agavean will have to kill legions of challenging enemies. There are
several squeeze points in the game and the most annoying is the healing
of Agavean which is with potions, spells, sleeping in a permanent
tent or inn or sleeping in an inventory based tent. Various shops
sell the small one-use temporary tents for gold and the potions of
different strengths for gold which is hard bought during successful
combats.

The combat system is Japanese arena-style turn-based combat, which
resembles the combat in some of the early role playing games like
Pool of Radiance by Strategic Simulations Incorporated (SSI). Turns
are determined by timed sliders which expire based upon the agility
of the characters. Enemy and friendly characters alike are allowed
to quaff potions, choose melee or ranged attack styles, and throw
spells.

When the heroine or all the enemies die the battle is over. The
game is over if Agavean dies. When all the enemies die, Agavean and
her traveling companions can go up in level if enough experience
is accumulated over enough battles. After the level up sequence with
the distribution of points into the five main attributes of strength,
agility, endurance, intelligence, and perception, there is a looting
screen where the items gained in battle are looted using either selection
of the items by mouse and cursor or a loot all button.

The five main attributes determine other secondary attributes of
attack, defense and hit points. The higher the main attributes, the
higher the secondary attributes. Character level is determined by
the experience gained in completing quests and successful combat.
Money or gold is the last statistic that the game keeps track of.
The game is therefore a level based role playing game (RPG) with
elements of a skill based system.

The combat skills are based upon the type of weapon used dagger,
light sword, heavy sword, axe, hammer, and staff. There are also
magical skills of offensive or attack spells, defense spells, and
supportive spells like healing. Exploration of the game environment
reveals trainers who can for a price train Agavean in these skills.
Combat skills are in the form of types of attacks which have a speed
that the attack is executed, potential damage relating to the type
of attack and other features that must be considered when selecting
them in battle.

Exploration will reveal the locations of taverns, shops, magic shops,
and blacksmith shops, who will offer Agavean items for sale and a
venue for her to sell her items and gain gold. As usual, there is
a vast disparity between the purchase and selling price for an item
so you have to be careful not to accidentally buy an item and cost
yourself money. Many games, such as World of Warcraft by Blizzard,
have a short time where you can buy back items from the vendor for
the price you sold it to the vendor to ameliorate the damaging effects
of making vendor errors.

Inventory holds the items you gained from combat or quests. The
inventory is quite large, perhaps infinite, and is scrollable to
reach those off the screen items. Runes, weapons, armor, one-time
use potions, one-time use spell scrolls, and magic spell recipies
that add to your spell book and other items are held in storage until
they are used or sold. Items stack intelligently saving inventory
space and playing time.

Runes form part of the magic system. Agavean constructs spells from
runes or finds and scribes recipies into her magic book. Runes are
consumed in constructing spells from the recipies scribed in your
spell book. The rune spell construction system is unforgiving, if
you make a mistake and use the wrong rune all the runes you have
used disappear and you have no spell. It is hard to imagine why game
designers add these punitive features to a game which is supposed
to be fun to play. Punishing the game player only leads to dissatisfaction
and frustration which eventually convinces the game player that your
game is not fun to play.

The core of Neverend is the exploration, interaction with non-player
characters (NPC), and the acquisition of quests that are completed
for rewards of experience, items, and money. A quest log keeps track
of the quest, but does not keep track of the hints given to the antagonist
at the time the quest is added to the log. The game player will need
to take paper notes of the hints given at the time the quest is obtained.
Some quests lead to other quests, the so called chain quests, while
other quests are stand alone. The quest system is quite satisfactory
and was a lot of fun. The quest system could have been better designed
by putting the hints with the quests in the quest log. A very nice
feature of the log is that quests completed are tracked in the log
along with quests in progress. This is useful if you play the game
through twice or with different characters so that the player does
not get confused about fished quests and quests yet to come. There
are well over one hundred quests.

The interaction with NPCs is a ton of fun. The interaction is menu
driven where you select different conversation options from a list
of possible responses. The game has voice actors reading the conversations
and adding to the game ambiance. The voice acting was quite good.

When Agavaen leaves the first side scrolling map, the game transitions
to an top-down overhead display of the local map area. A more detailed
map is activated with the M-key which shows the entire map of the
game. Certain towns and features are shown on the larger map so that
the player can get the lay of the land and relate his location to
locations on the close up top down map.

Encounters are random and the monsters appear to increase in difficulty
in relation to the player level. The increase in monster difficulty
seems to be proportional to the level and skills of the player, so
that the game does not become unplayable as your player increases
in level as some of these types of games do.

In summary, I really liked this game. The game reminded me of a
graphic animated adventure, had arena-style, turn-based combat, and
an interesting exploration system. The quality of the graphics, animation
and voice acting were good to excellent. The music and sound effects
were also better than average. I have to give the game a grade of
A-. I enjoyed it. This game may not be your cup of tea, however,
since different people like different things.

System Requirements:

• Windows® 98 / ME
  / 2000 / XP
• DirectX 9.0(TM)
• Processor 800 MHz
  (or better)
• 256 MB RAM
• 32MB Graphic card
  with 3D acceleration
• min. 2 GB free disk
  space
• 16-bit Direct X(TM)
  compatible sound card