Deliverance

STORY / GAMEPLAY
The future of Llzn Cerrig had looked bleak. The evil and twisted Queen Bahd had imprisoned the Fairy guardians of the Realm, a place of great natural beauty and wonder, so that she could set about draining the very life-force from the land to sustain her aged body. In desperate attempt one fairy had managed to enlist the help of the Stormlord to free them from the clutches of the evil Crone and rid the land from the threat of desolation she imposed. He succeeded in his mission but was unable to slay the Queen, who managed to escape to lands unknown.
Many years of peace and harmony passed, and all was well within Llyn Cerrig. Little did the Fairies know, but the harmony of The Realm was soon to be broken by a terrible Darkness which smothered the land for a full 40 days. Panic and confusion spread throughout and was added by the sudden realization that as each darkened day passed the colony was getting smaller - Fairy-folk were simply vanishing. Word soon spread through the remaining Fairies that the Evil Queen Bahd had returned to ravish the land, this time in league with the Devil himself! Together with his many evil minions they were again snatching and imprisoning The Realms' Fairy guardians in order to leave it bare of defence, and their ultimate mercy...
The days passed and eventually all the Fairy-folk were captured and imprisoned deep within Satan's Palace. The Darkness was lifted from the land and the Crone Queen set about draining the precious life- force from it, transforming it into wasteland!
To the game, you control Stormlord, a powerful warrior armed with a battleaxe and your main goal is to locate and free the imprisoned fairies and finally bring back peace to the land. On your way you'll have to encounter a variety of enemies, from terrifying spiders and bats to animal-like demons and you must also beware of any kind of traps scattered around each level, like deadly pits of fire, gigantic arms coming out of walls or even arrows shot at you from nowhere. Your battleaxe can be either thrown at anything that moves or you can whirl it chopping the enemies that come too close. In addition, you must open wardrobes (!) to find keys that will unlock the doors to the next platforms. In general, the game starts at a quite fair difficulty level that gradually raises as you go on.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
Deliverance is a quite impressive game for its time, with gothic-style backgrounds, large sprites and some nicely designed details here and there. The Amiga version has up to 64 colors on-screen (EHB) but the animation could have been smoother since in some occasions we spot a bit of "choppiness". As for the game's sound, Deliverance includes a nicely done introductory music and some sampled sound effects (unfortunately there's no music during gameplay). Overall, Deliverance is a technically decent game and pretty fun to play.