80 Days - A Preview
Gorath, 2005-11-03

The French-Ukrainian development studio Frogwares is a specialist at making games based upon world-literature. After using elements of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle´s Sherlock Holmes books in The Mystery of the Mummy and last year´s The Silver Earring they decided to adapt a famous novel: Around the World in 80 Days, written by Jules Verne. We paid a visit to the German publisher Anaconda´s booth at the Games Convention in Leipzig, who was kind enough to show us three of their upcoming adventures.

The game "80 Days" is loosely based upon Jules Verne´s work. The main character is not Phileas Fogg, as one would expect, but a young fellow named Oliver Lavisheart. He agrees to help his eccentric uncle Matthew win a bet: visit several exotic places, collect proof of Matthew´s 4 brilliant inventions and return within 80 days.

On a technical level, 80 Days looks pretty good compared to other adventures. The seven big locations - the cities Cairo, Bombay, San Francisco and Yokohama - plus the means of transport between them - are presented in colorful 3D graphics with crisp high resolution textures. Everything is real-time - there are no pre-rendered backgrounds. Additional features include dynamic day-night-cycles, a particle system, lip-synchronous voice acting and an interesting sound track.

This time Frogwares chose to expand the classic adventure gameplay with a few harmless action-adventure and RPG elements; quite a risky decision, given the adventure community isn´t exactly known as innovation-friendly. The novelties are best described by a few examples, to illustrate the trade-offs. Each location has a certain time limit and if you exceed it the game informs you that it can no longer be solved and you should reload. You can save time by using transport devices like flying carpets, cars or elephants, but unfortunately they cost money, which is - you guessed it - limited. Money can be earned by doing optional side quests for certain NPCs. Furthermore Oliver has to eat every few hours and sleep when he is tired. The further costs money, the latter time.

80 Days offers three difficulty levels; the lowest one has the time limit disabled, which also makes the rest harmless because the player has all the time in the world to solve side quests.

The levels can be explored freely. This can take quite some time per pedes, so it might be an idea to rent a vehicle. The controls are easy to understand but require some coordination: WASD controls Oliver or the vehicle, while the mouse adjusts the field of view. Despite the size of the levels it´s nearly impossible to lose one´s way because colored markers on the always visible mini-map show the rough direction to the known locations.

The markers are only one example of how 80 Days takes the player by the hand to ensure fluid gameplay. Others are the quest log and the prevention of pixel hunting. Whenever you get a new quest or a hint for a quest you already have, your quest log is automatically updated - this way you always know where to go next. Every useable item is highlighted when Oliver is close to it and looks in its direction, so it should be immediately clear what can be manipulated and what can´t.

A possible problem shows its face if we have a look at the other action elements. Sometimes Oliver has to sneak, jump or climb - if he fails he can try again, but he gets a time penalty of a few hours and it seems 80 Days will use a savepoint system instead of the genre-typical unrestricted save. Savepoints in combination with action sounds like a potential source of frustration. Frogwares is an experienced developer, though so it´s likely they´ll get it right.

80 Days is an ambitious game. The developers use the standard quest and item-based adventure gameplay as the foundation for something bigger. They enhance their product with action elements and a ticking clock, to create more thrill for the player. It´s a race against time, not a calm point & click adventure. This sounds very interesting as a concept - but can Frogwares pull it off? And is 80 Days an adventure with a bit of action or an action-adventure with a strong story? We´ll know the answer when 80 Days is on the shelves.