Knightmare

STORY / GAMEPLAY
The game is designed around the Captive system and has cracking credentials, uniting an excellent license with a proven code. Captive players will immediate feel at home with Knightmare. The system that drives the game essentially uses the same icon and keyboard commands as Captive of course with some improvements and tweaks where necessary. The four men team can be controlled either by clicking on directional icons or keyboard combinations. Pressing the left mouse button on an item it either gets or activates it, while the right button is employed to initiate party actions. It is a simple system to learn and offers enough flexibility to fill four huge dungeons with tests of precise control. The four members of the team have different skills, specialties and weaknesses. They all carry an empty backpack with which they can carry a kit found and two hand 'slots' for any all important item (say, weapons). Roaming around without a compass may get confusing. It's not difficult, especially if you map things from the very start, but some sudden actions or changes in your focus can leave you disorientated, which is something common in all almost all Dungeon Master-style games. Every single square of a corridor must be checked at all times and each character must be watched to ensure that they are ready for unexpected combat. All the puzzles and riddles that inform your quest must be analyzed and solved. One of the innovative aspects of this game is its novel means of transport! The player whizzes around on a mining cart at the beginning and then may even row a small boat in shark infested waters! Knightmare plays fast and hard and as dungeon romps go, only few can match it for the continuous ferocity of its assault in your team members' lives. Each encounter is tailored to suit your team's status so the game runs in a state of perpetual high tension. It is huge, it looks marvelous and it's extremely difficult, although there's a sort of wizardry to help you out a fair bit.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
Technically the game is slick with fine details to create both tests and atmosphere. The Amiga version sports 32 color on-screen with nicely detailed corridors and sprites wrapped up inside a nicely animated pseudo-3D environment of moody atmospheric tones and decent monsters animation. But the items are painted in the same shades and are therefore often difficult to see. Although more than half MB of RAM is needed to get the best out of the game, the results in sound are fabulous offering plenty of high quality sampled sound effects and an atmospheric main menu music. The fully stereo effect plays a significant role here as it allows you to trace monsters simply by following the sound of their footsteps! If you could already have an extra half megabyte of RAM on your Amiga you will be surprised from the differences in atmosphere.