by Dale Farris, President, Golden Triangle PC Club
July 2001

Game Overview

A beautiful princess is the sole heiress to the estate of her mysterious uncle, the Duke. On the occasion of her 25th birthday, she receives a mysterious message summoning her to a meeting with his virtual self. You are sent by the estate executor to help the princess find the treasures hidden in the palace, the Chateau d'Or. You meet the princess at the magnificent Chateau d'Or palace the Duke built to house his archaeological discoveries of powerful magical artifacts.

The Chateau d'Or is home to the "Sensory Focal Devices," the Duke's greatest archaeological finds. The members of the Duke's archaeological expeditions that discovered these treasures have died or disappeared without a trace, leading some to think the palace and the devices are cursed. The Duke spent his life researching these magical devices that allow one to see images of places and events distant in time and space. He focused these devices on the place close to his heart, Paris, France.

This is the premise to this neat new computer game, Adventure at the Chateau d'Or, from Karma Labs, Inc. As you seek out the spirit of the mysterious Duke, you explore the beautiful chateau, a wondrous example of palatial, Louis XIV style architecture, that is resplendent with ornate gardens and fountains, gothic styled buildings, and beautiful wall tapestries, all spread over a great bounty of acreage that genuinely defines the landed gentry.

In order to find and interact with the spirit, you have to find three places in the palace (2 in the library; 1 in the TV room) that provide you with a knowledge base of facts. This information is required in order to successfully answer the Duke's (in spirit form) questions and receive a key that will be required in order to further progress the story. As you "acquire knowledge," you are actually learning a lot about the history of France, Paris, and the Gothic style of architecture.

The laptop computer in the library plays video files that explain all about the history of Paris, including the ancient Lutece (the olden name for Paris) and Clovis, the Middle Ages, including a brief story of Saint Louis and the Sorbonne, a brief bio of Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette, and the French Revolution.

Also in the library, you find a large book filled with historical facts about the Gothic style of architecture, including many visually splendid full-color photographs of many well known sites such as the Notre Dame de Paris, the Basilique Saint-Denis, and La Sainte-Chapelle. The photos are remarkable and the history here is of value to anyone interested in French history and background on Paris.

In the TV room, you find a remote control device that controls a T.V. This adds even more keywords that will be necessary when you meet up with the Duke.

As you click on and play through these multimedia files, the key information kernel word is stored in the index of the HIM (hero's information manager) that lists the keywords from all these files, and that provides you a map of the palace. This index of keywords will have to be referred to when you come across the Duke's spirit.

The Duke's spirit will ask you a series of questions (the number varies according to the difficulty level you set early in the game), and in order to correctly answer these questions, you will have to take a lot of notes when you play the laptop files and the remote TV files. The questions are of the Who Am I, or What Am I, or Where Am I variety, and in order to remember the information, you will need a lot of paper to write down a lot of stuff.

Once you correctly answer his questions, he gives you a key that opens a chest and a closet in other rooms of the palace. The eventual goal of the game is to find the crown to give to the princess, as well as other objects that will at the very end of the game have to be placed on the black globe in the correct order in order to "save" the princess.

During gameplay, you are moving all around the very large palace, entering the different rooms, some of which do not open until you find the right object, using standard point-and-click mouse commands. The game design shines here, as you move about the various screens that simulate what the palace looks like.

As you enter the different rooms, different background music plays, all helping to convey the overall mood of the game. This attention to the background, environment, and the music represents one of the more interesting aspects of the game.

Game Features

First-time effort from Karma Labs, Inc.
Lovely full-color photo-realistic graphics
First-person perspective
Search for powerful magical artifacts and find hidden treasure
Use your intelligence, intuition, and memory
Vast amount of detail historical information
Very impressive background display
Well designed, integrated background soundtrack
3 levels of difficulty can be selected
Separate, distinct sound schemes for the different rooms
Natural sounds lend impact to the outdoor settings
Super integration of historical data into the game plot
Magical puzzle gizmos that are just hard enough to be fun
Floating toolbar with the HIM and other controls
Game length just right, especially for first-time adventure gamers
Super history of Paris, Gothic architecture integrated into the game plot
Classic point-and-click adventure game interface
Totally recreated settings in authentic detail
Original storyline & original score
Simplified gaming operations to lessen system crashes
Beautifully drawn backgrounds, objects, and characters
Aptly created sound effects and background score add impact
One timed puzzle included
Game environment set in historical timeframes adds authenticity to play

Game Play Notes

Adventure at the Chateau d'Or is the first game release for Karma Labs, Inc., and represents the design talents and skills of this development team as they stride out into the saturated computer game business. The game is a classically styled adventure game, directed by the mouse, presenting screens that you click on to approach, objects you pick up and store, and various puzzles that have to be solved to get the required objects.

There are 3 levels of gameplay, from easy to medium to difficult. These levels represent the degree of complexity of the puzzles and the number of the Duke's questions you have to correctly answer in order to get the key.

The puzzles are well integrated into the game, and include button pressing sequences, color combinations, or order of placement. The artist studio puzzle is very clever, beautifully done, and requires the use of spray paint cans and brushes to find the right combination that will provide further clues. The spray paint cans create an entire painting that represents another key room in the palace, and you can even run out of paint. I suggest you save your game before you experiment with the spray paint cans.

The movement is slideshow driven, without any full-motion, or 360 degree panning, but this is not a major let down, as in most adventure games today, the classic slideshow remains the primary movement approach. In only the newest adventure games do we find these more rich movement schemes.

The simple navigation and intuitive puzzle solving will be very familiar to most savvy adventure gamers. For first-time adventure gamers, I think this game presents a nice introduction to what adventure gaming is all about, without being so completely impossible as to forever turn them off to this genre of computer gaming.

The mouse cursor shape changes according to what you can do at the moment in particular scenes. You can possibly click the arrow cursor to move left, right, forward, or return from full-screen, or the pointer hand cursor to pick up an object to place it in your active inventory, or otherwise interact with objects.

This need to find "hot" spots in screens is a classic adventure game genre feature that will be very familiar to most experienced adventure gamers, and in this game, this becomes a bit tough in only one spot the game. So, save before you enter the dungeon. 

However, in this relatively simple game, these hot spots have been significantly reduced. In many screens, there are no hot spots that have to be found and clicked on, compared with other more complex adventure games that have so many of these clickable areas that oftentimes some are nearly impossible to find. With this game, this vastly scaled down approach to these hot spots makes for a game that is more fun than frustrating.

The game does at times seem as if it were a "first-game" from the team. There are not a lot of objects to find and pick up, and the inventory is very simple. The most difficult aspect of the game is remembering all the neat information about the history of France, Paris, the Gothic style of architecture, and the other historical facts, in order to know the correct answer to the Duke's questions. Before you begin the interaction with the Duke, save your game. The items in the HIM are listed only once and cannot be used again after you choose them.

Note that without extensive, detailed notes about all this history, it will be very difficult to know the correct answer to the Duke's questions, so you might want to select the Easy level in the beginning. This will mean you will have to correctly answer only 5 questions.

Basic Functions

You only go where you click to go, if allowed, and you have to follow through with classic adventure game puzzle solving, object hunting and picking up. The relatively few puzzles are interesting and not "impossible" solve.

The Adventure at the Chateau d'Or contains NO puzzles that require you to first figure out the exact sequence of all the numerous moves or steps, in order to open up something or get a necessary object. Thank Goodness! In other adventure games where you do find these clearly deviously designed puzzles, then a walkthrough guide that contains all of the precise steps to follow, in exactly the right order, is of course mandatory. Who wants to take hours and hours figuring out exactly what has to happen on the 85th move, before even taking the first move, in order to get an object or open another door?

There are only two "characters" you come across in the game, including the spirit of the Duke, with minimal dialogue. In this game, you do NOT have to find multiple other characters in order to click on all the dialogue options in order to open up other parts of the game. Also, you will NOT have to decide on dialogue options, among various choices, and you will NOT fail to accomplish the game goal because you selected one wrong dialogue option that popped up 2 hours ago. Thank goodness for this! In these games where it is obvious you can choose the wrong dialogue choice, the strategy guide is essential to knowing which one is correct and will open up other parts of the game or provide you with the desired object needed later in the game.

The inventory is kept very simple, and you do not ever need to combine or split objects.

The attention to the historical detail has been well integrated into game play, and this review of the history of France and Paris is very interesting, besides being necessary for better understanding of the story.

You can also save your game at any point, a feature always appreciated by adventure gamers. In this game, you can only "die" in one spot, in the dungeon. Once you get to the wine cellar, if you have the cup in your inventory, and you drink 5 glasses of wine, you will go to the dungeon.

In the dungeon, you have very limited time to figure out how to get out, but as well, you will find a key piece of information that will be required in order to finish the game. So, in other words, you have to risk "death," to get this vital piece of information. Save your game before you enter the wine cellar and proceed with the wine drinking.

Some Game Concerns

The classic first-person perspective is used throughout this adventure game. This means you see the screen from the point of view of the main character you play.
 
With the standard adventure game genre style of point-and-click interface, this means you are not always sure in many cases what will happen when you click the arrow cursor to apparently take you forward to another screen. For example, in some screen shots, the forward movement takes you completely over a pond of water, while other parts of screens cannot be interacted with at all.

In the screen shots when you click on doors to open and go through, this results in seeing a cut scene of the animation of going through the door. You can more quickly complete these by clicking the mouse during the animated movements. 

About Those Walkthrough Solution Guides

While I did have the suggested walkthrough for the game supplied by the vendor, in this case, I think this game represents one of the rare adventure games that most players can actually finish without need of an official strategy guide. In so many other adventure games I've played, I've found that without a strategy guide, completing the game is nearly impossible.

I've made a habit of always getting the official strategy guide with most all games, in order to see all there is in the game, as well as to be able to finish the game and go on to other things. Without a guide in other games, getting through the game is so difficult that it is not surprising so many gamers throw up their hands in total frustration and get away from the genre altogether.

With this game, I think Karma Labs has succeeded in balancing nice gameplay with solid information, while presenting just enough clever puzzles that integrate well with the game story and are not impossible to solve. 

While it is true that a lot of adventure gamers pride themselves on their diligence, determination, and patience to independently complete a game without any help, in my case, I don't have that much free time to devote to going over and over something, or starting over again and again, in order to finally figure out the puzzles.

Compared with the massively complex and terribly difficult puzzles in a Myst game for example, this game is really much more relevant for first-time adventure gamers and folks like me with not a lot of free time to devote to solving puzzles.

Targeted Customers

This game is super for first-time adventure gamers, or others with little time to devote to the game. The gameplay is relatively simple, compared with other vastly more complex games now on the market, but the integration of the very interesting French and Paris history is a super idea.

I think this game has a definite role in educational settings, when teachers are interested in a fun way to help students learn about France and Paris. With careful guidance of the students as they experience the puzzle solving and the timed puzzle, the students could work their way through the game, but along the way learn something about France, Paris and the Gothic style of architecture.

Install and Setup

The installation and setup presented no difficulties on my machine. You can cancel the installation of the DirectX files, if you already have these files. The game mostly plays from the files on the CD ROM, and the hard drive space requirements are minimal. 

Price

$29.99 (super bargain!)

Minimum System Configuration Requirements

Windows 95/98/ME/2000
P-120 processor or faster
70MB free hard disk space
32MB RAM
4X CD ROM or faster
SVGA monitor with thousands (16-bit) of colors
DirectX compatible sound board
Quick Time 4 or later (also included on disk)
(plays mainly from the CD ROM disk)

At the time of this writing, no patches for this game had been released.

Not requiring a 3d graphics accelerator card, and needing a minimally powered CPU means this game is playable on many more systems, a wise move I think on the part of the Karma Labs team. While it is true that more newer systems either come with or are being customized with newer, 32MB or 64MB 3dfx video boards and high-end, 3d audio boards, driven in part by the high-end requirements of many computer games, in fact I suspect there many more legacy systems still working that will likely be fine for this game.

The above system configuration requirements indicate the minimum and recommended system configuration requirements, and as any experienced gamer knows, if at all possible, you just don't ever want to load and run any computer game on minimally configured systems. Computer games are notorious for taking over machines, and this is why users will need to be sure and close out all their other open files, before playing this and any computer game. 

About Karma Labs, Inc.

Founded in 1996 to create interactive entertainment, Karma Labs, Inc. consists of a dedicated team of professionals with a high level of expertise in their chosen fields. Kevin Morris is President of Karma Labs, Inc. and he leads a team of talented designers, graphic artists and developers. Prior to founding Karma Labs, Inc., Kevin was the Sound & Video Product Manager at Macromedia, Inc. He began his career as a development engineer at the Delco Electronics division of General Motors and he holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from Columbia University.

This game is being published and marketed by CenturionSoft (centurionsoft.com) , a SoftwareAbroad (softwareabroad.com) company. CenturionSoft specializes in publishing and marketing software, and in the case of games like Adventure at the Chateau d'Or, this relationship helps a relatively "small" software development firm, like Karma Labs, Inc., get their product into the market faster and more noticed by potential customers.

Contact Information

Karma Labs Inc.
163 Amsterdam Avenue, # 358
New York, NY 10023
212-937-2228
FAX 212-937-2228
www.karmalabs.com
info@karmalabs.com

You can also order from other retailers or online vendors.