By Dale Farris, Secretary
Golden Triangle PC Club
November 2003

Game Overview

Join Ariane, a determined, young journalist, who falls into the scoop of a lifetime when she discovers an unknown world far below the Earth's surface. Explore primitive landscapes brimming with strange beasts, and encounter the fascinating civilizations that inhabitant this foreign land. The choices Ariane makes will determine the future of this forgotten and primitive world.

Will she help save these strange beings and their home - already in peril - or launch her career by exposing their story and threatening their very existence? Cross the threshold into the unknown for an unparalleled adventure, and come face to face with the land at the center of the Earth.

Game Story Background

Scientific opinion was divided when, in 1864, Professor Hardwigg first told of his adventurous journey to the center of the Earth. Should scientists believe this far-fetched tale from a member of their community? An envious rival succeeds in undermining Hardwigg’s credibility and gradually the whole story is forgotten. The expedition is rumored to have been pure fantasy.

Now, it's the year 2005, somewhere in the skies above Iceland. Ariane, a young reporter, is out covering a story for a leading discovery magazine. No sooner has her helicopter landed on a ledge of the Sneffels volcano than it is destroyed in a violent rockslide. Ariane is thrown clear, but the pilot is lost. She sets off to try and find help when suddenly the earth opens up under her feet.

Several hundred meters below she finds herself alone on a subterranean beach. Ariane discovers the strangest of landscapes and a host of unusual objects. What is this weird world? Who are these people? Where do they come from?

Join Ariane as she explores an unknown world of fascinating and fantastical civilizations hidden beneath the surface of the Earth. For a professional journalist it’s the chance of a lifetime, with the promise of a scoop to really make her career take off. However, once the first rush of excitement at the discovery is past, grim reality rushes in: the future of this world is in jeopardy.

Almost against her better judgment, Ariane dives right into the thick of the action. What choices will she make? Will she be able to find her way back to the surface? Will she get her scoop of a lifetime?

Will she reveal the existence of this world at the risk of redoubling the threat to its continued existence?

Playing Journey to the Center of the Earth involves many classic adventure game genre features. These include a typical slideshow screen layout, moving around by pointing and clicking the mouse, picking up objects for storage, moving objects from an inventory to their appropriate place, and of course, going all over the many areas in the game to get objects that have to be brought back to other areas.

Age Group

This is a super adventure game that is relevant for players of all ages, but the very young will probably need assistance from adults, in order to get help figuring out the many puzzles and challenges in the game. In this game, the classic adventure puzzles have been well integrated into the story line, but many may stymie younger players.

Game Features

Myst-like adventure game that is challenging
Beautiful graphics and design
2 possible endings
Multiple fantasy environments to discover
Characters in real-time 3D
40+ hours of game play
Original sound track
Original atmospheric music
Meticulous exploration and gameplay
Very intriguing, unique storyline
Classic adventure game genre features
Save the game anywhere anytime
Third-person perspective
Well designed, integrated background sounds and sound effects
Classic point-and-click interface to work the game
Beautifully drawn backgrounds
Difficult, challenging puzzles

Game Play

In this neat new adventure game, you can save your game anywhere, and you play using classic point and click to move around from scene to scene. You just press the Escape key and click on the overhead television in the Main Menu Cabin, to access the Save, as well as the Load game options.

In addition, the game presents options for changing the graphics and sound settings anytime during your game. You can set the screen resolution, color definition, LCD frequency, screen brightness, sound effect volume, music volume, voice volume, and you can also set anti-aliasing, shadows simple or complex, written on-screen dialog and commentaries, and the speed of the dialog. The graphics settings automatically adjust to your computer's video card, but you may modify these if your card allows.

There are classic adventure movement/action cursors, including the default walk cursor, double-clicking to make Ariane run, a movement cursor, and action cursor, an analyzer cursor, and a dialog cursor.

The game's inventory lets you collect the numerous objects that you will find. When the action cursor appears over an object, you can take the object by clicking on it. The object will then arrange itself in the inventory bar. To open the inventory, right-click your mouse at any time during the game. Roll the cursor over any object and additional information will pop up. Click on the arrows on the left and right of the inventory bar in order to look up your entire inventory. To take an object, left-click on the item, and it is now attached to your cursor and you can use it in the game. It is also possible to combine objects in the inventory by taking one object and placing it on another object. The appearance of a new or modified object indicates if the attempted combination was correct or not.

Ariane can access her laptop computer at any time in the game. It includes numerous functions that help her in her quest and allows her to receive ness from the outside world. These include My Documents, an Encyclopedia, Mail, Send, Inbox,  and My Photos.

In this game, as in most all adventure games, you have to look everywhere and try to pick up all objects you see. As in most all adventure games, there are no superfluous objects. All items must be found and picked up. These objects will be used in later points in the game, and this too follows the classic adventure game logic of having to figure out what to do with all these objects, or a combination of some of the objects, in order to further progress in the game.

For example, early on in the game, you will need to pick up a helicopter blade, in order to use it to pry open a wrecked helicopter. Once inside, you must take the laptop computer, a bag, a knife, and a rope. Open your inventory bar and roll the mouse cursor over the bag. A window will pop up listing the items in the bag. Click the "Unpack" button in order to retrieve the items. You use a screwdriver to unhook a first aid box. You should then "Unpack" the first aid box, as you will need some of its contents later in the game. While in the inventory, switch on Ariane's computer and the computer places itself in the very left of the inventory bar: it is now active.

Soon, as you explore the area around the wrecked helicopter, you have to use the helicopter blade to move a large rock blocking your passage. When the passage becomes too dark to see, you have to use your lighter from the inventory to allow you to walk further.

Sound familiar? Of course, especially to fans of adventure games. In Journey to the Center of the Earth, adventure game fans will be thrilled by all the many times you have to really use your brain to figure out what to do next, or how to solve a problem, in order to further progress the game.

Game Play Concerns

In this game, the focus seems to have been more on the beautiful background and design, rather than on interactivity. While there are indeed many interesting objects involved in the screens, you can interact with very few, but these are the objects of key concern to solving the puzzles. This works like most all adventure games. You have to move around your mouse until you find the image mapped "hot spot," that either represents an object you can pick up, an object you can interact with, or allows you to move the character from screen to screen. These walking hot spots are mostly an arrow with 2 footsteps, indicating you can move to that spot, and these are especially important in being able to move from one screen to another. However, in many, many cases, you can move to another screen with just a regular arrow shape. This sometimes results in making it very difficult to even move the character into different screens.

Finding many of the objects is also frequently very difficult. Many of the pre rendered screens are quite large in size, and the character can move around quite a bit before activating another screen. In some of these larger screens, you have to be very, very diligent in moving around the mouse pointer in order to be sure you do not miss objects necessary for later parts of the game. This also means a walkthrough will definitely come in handy, in order to help you know what to look for and pick up from within some of these larger screen areas.

The game allows for an early ending, if you wish, and this will bypass 2 entire levels of the game. If you choose not to end the game early, you will then play through 2 more levels, and these levels involve the character in restoring the peace in the valley before she returns to the surface.

The game also has one of those very tedious, time-consuming, multiple step puzzles, the Hanoi Tower. In this puzzle, you have numerous film reels stacked on a spindle, with the largest on the very bottom. You have two empty spindles and you have to move all the reels from the left most spindle to the right most spindle, taking care never to place a larger reel on top of a smaller reel. This type of puzzle will be quickly recognizable to savvy, experienced adventure gamers. However, for novice gamers, this will likely be a major, killer choke point that will likely result in quitting the game for good. To get through a puzzle like this means planning a multiple step strategy that involves seemingly endless clicking of the mouse on the reels of film.

In addition, I found many of the voice over narrations to be very amateurish, and some sound as if the game developer enlisted some of their back-office clerical support staff to read the lines for many of the characters. Other of the voices sound like amateurs trying to emulate various accents, all of which end up as silly.

Journey to the Center of the Earth is certainly lushly designed but the background music could have been given more attention. The game does quickly end up being a puzzle solver, and you will have to use the classic trial-and-error approach to trying various objects in later parts of the game in order to get a door to open, or something else to happen, because there is little information provided about the objects when the main character picks them up or looks at them. Plus, as in many other adventure games, you will also need to do a lot of running back and forth, fetching and grabbing objects you find elsewhere that are needed in a prior location.

About Those Walkthroughs

Journey to the Center of the Earth will certainly appeal to all hard-core adventure gamers who really enjoy spending countless hours scratching their heads over all the many choke points in the game. This means the puzzles in this game are not designed for simple reasoning, but instead challenge your ability to find and place in the inventory all the objects that are needed in later parts of the game. This also means a lot of going back and forth with objects.

In other words, Journey to the Center to the Earth will also stimulate a lot of interest in the official walkthrough strategy guide, or finding online walkthroughs graciously provided by other gamers who have successfully made it through the game and have willingly volunteered their time to create and post a guide to help others. This all means your own personal opinion about the level of "fun" playing a game like Journey to the Center of the Earth all depends on how much fun you find in such a classic, puzzle-laden adventure game as this.

Try this site, if you need such help:

www.journey-earth.com

As for me, the quicker I can find and use a walkthrough guide, the more "fun" I perceive in any puzzle adventure game. This is just my own personal preference, as I have just way too many other things to do and I just do not have a lot of free time to devote to solving these types of puzzles. Once again however, this is not a criticism of the game. Indeed, I think Journey to the Center of the Earth will most definitely please adventure gamers who enjoy this level of intense complexity, puzzle difficulty, and mental challenges.

Install and Setup

The installation and setup should present no problems. Uninstall the program using its own uninstaller, located in its own folder.

Price

$19.99 (super bargain!)
$29.99 (Canada)

System Configuration Requirements

P-III 500MHz processor (P-III 600MHz recommended)
Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP
64MB RAM (128MB RAM recommended)
700MB free hard disk space
16MB DirectX video card (32MB card recommended)
8X CD ROM Drive (24X recommended)

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. However, in the case of this Viva-Media, title, I think we have an example of a computer program for children that will actually very likely play just fine even on most systems.

About Viva-Media

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

Click here for a review of Viva-Media's Physicus.

Click here for a review of Viva-Media's Bioscopia.

Contact Information

Linda Weal, Media Coordinator
Viva Media
580 Broadway, Suite 604
New York, NY 10012
212-431-4420, ext. 201
212-431-4420
FAX 212-431-4537
linda@viva-media.com
mail@viva-media.com
www.viva-media.com

You can also order from other retailers or online vendors.