By Dale Farris, Reviews Coordinator
Golden Triangle PC Club
April 2006

Game Overview

Driven by destiny and forbidden knowledge, Professor Samuel Hunt must travel the globe to find keepers that guard AGON. Embark on a fantastic journey to far lands. The quest for the truth will lead you to surprising discoveries, challenging puzzles, and amazing characters. In three thrilling episodes, the quest for AGON will take you from London's British Museum, north to the Polar Regions, and south to Madagascar. The trail to AGON will lead you to precious secrets and deadly evil. Immerse yourself into the 3D world of AGON to experience an adventure like no other!

The ancient games of nations have emerged from obscurity in this new adventure game, AGON: The Mysterious Codex. The first episode finds the professor in London in the British Museum on the trail of clues and forbidden knowledge. As he uncovers more evidence, he understands that his life will forever change as he embarks on a quest that is filled with precious secrets, amazing characters, and deadly evil.

AGON is a classic adventure game that will definitely appeal to fans of this genre of computer games. The game provides immersive, fully rendered environments that are beautifully detailed and lend great credibility to the game. The game also includes many well integrated puzzles that will challenge gamers, and a very interesting story that is slowly revealed as you play through the game.

Your main character gets wrapped up in a totally immersive, mysterious story about ancient runes and a series of codex documents that as you find the clues and pieces of the story further enrich this fully developed mystery. The many episodes are built around your need to find all these various stones that will eventually form the complete set and ultimately reveal the full story.

In addition, gamers will also be able to play two original board games that have been integrated into the game. These include Tablut and Fanorona. Additionally, Tablut and Fanorona can also be played online with other real-world opponents.

Planned Game Series

In this initial retail release, the game AGON consists of 3 episodes that are included in the very reasonably priced retail version of the game. In addition, gamers will soon be able to continue this interesting game with 10 additional planned episodes that will begin to be available via the Internet.

At the game developer's (Private Moon Studios) Web site, www.agongame.com, you can gain access to these upcoming episodes. At the time of this review, these episodes are due for release at a minimal $10 per episode, and the total number of chapters planned is 13. Also, it appears that the original retail version of the game must be installed on your machine, in order to add on these forthcoming episodes.

Features

An epic mystery story in 3 compelling games
Challenging puzzles, riddles and games
Exotic locations in London , Madagascar, and Lapland
Realistically detailed 3D environments
Gather clues from intriguing and sophisticated characters
Exciting use of the sound card and speakers in puzzles
Beautiful full motion computer generated scenes
Characters are fully developed and very realistic
Classic adventure game point-and-click movement
Challenging puzzle solving
Additional integrated board games that must be solved

Game Play

AGON is fully controlled by the mouse, including all interactions with the game movement and puzzles. You can press and hold down on the left mouse button to move the game scenes around, and this is vital in many parts of the game when you must look down or up to find objects you must click on.

The game uses all the traditional adventure game features, including the solving of challenging puzzles that are hinted at when you find other objects, especially books, slips of paper, and other items that provide background information or clues. Of course, this means that you must take a lot of notes as you run across these objects, or look back at other objects you can keep in your inventory. The inventory also follows the classic adventure game approach, as you must find all the required objects and put these into your inventory. Then, some objects can be combined and all objects eventually are used later in the game. This involves clicking on the object and then placing the object on a later scene or character.

The game follows adventure game logic as you progress through the linear path of the story, and you must obey the adventure game rules of looking at everything, finding all required objects, finding and talking to all the interactive, non-playable characters, and keeping extensive notes about the information you collect, because the puzzles will demand that you figure out all these prior clues and hints in order to solve the puzzles.

The puzzles in AGON are some of the more challenging of adventure games, and unless you play through the game with a walkthrough guide, be prepared to spend a lot of time trying to decipher the puzzles and the hints and clues. As in most all adventure games, these clues and hints are not straight-forward about solving the puzzles, and are cryptic in nature. However, these challenging puzzles are in keeping with the tradition in adventure games and will provide interesting, head-scratching challenges for gamers.

During the game, you come across 2 board games that are well integrated into the game, and these fun board games do present a significant challenge to solve or win. In addition, you must win these board games in order to obtain necessary items that will open up forthcoming episodes. Thankfully, the game has a nice Menu option that lets you set these board games to an Easy difficulty, making it a bit more likely that gamers will progress through to the end of the game. One of these board games in these first 3 episodes involves many, many mouse clicks as you move pieces around in order to capture all the other pieces. While this pattern could eventually be figured out by savvy, determined gamers, those more easily frustrated by this type of puzzle solving might want to first get a walkthrough guide to help you through these mouse clicks. I found a nice guide to these first 3 episodes at www.gameboomers.com and www.adventurelantern.com.

Minimum Specifications

Windows
Pentium III 800MHz or equivalent processor
Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP
128MB RAM
32MB DirectX 8 compatible 3D video card (GeForce2 or equal)
DirectX compatible sound card + stereo speakers

Mac Machines
700MHz PowerPC G3 processor
Mac OS X version 10.2 or higher
16MB video RAM (32MB recommended)

Age Group

AGON is rated E for everyone, but I think the game will appeal more to older teenagers and adults, especially those interested in adventure games. The puzzles in the game will challenge most gamers and likely overwhelm younger or less experienced adventure gamers.

Price

$29.99
This is a bargain price for the tremendous value built into this marvelous game that will be fun for players of all ages.

Installation and Setup

The game comes on one CD, and should install and set up with no problems. You do not need the game disc in the CD ROM drive to play the game.

About Viva Media, LLC

Viva Media, LLC is a privately owned New York company dedicated to publishing a wide array of interactive content of the highest standards. The company's collection of more than 40 multimedia titles tout more than 30 awards for excellence in publishing. Viva Media features the award winning line of Tivola Publishing CD-ROM games and the Viva range of titles including:

Viva Chess
Viva Astronomy
Viva Kids
Viva Adventure
Viva Music

AGON represents a nice new venture for Viva-Media. In the past, Viva-Media has excelled in producing superior quality "edutainment" titles for children that combine valuable learning with fun entertainment. Now with AGON, Viva-Media is entering the market of fun entertainment that competes with other of the well known adventure games from other vendors. The focus in AGON is on a fun, challenging adventure game, and the game competes well with all the many other adventure games now available in this very mature genre of computer games.

Contact Information

John W. De Feo, Media Coordinator
Viva-Media
580 Broadway, Suite 604
New York, NY 10012
212-431-4420
FAX 212-431-4537
john@viva-media.com
www.viva-media.com

You can also order from other retailers or online vendors.