Muscarine or Erica's Trip

A rather surreal, absurd and psychedelic adventure game with hand-drawn graphics and "Monkey Island"-stylish user interface. You have to guide Erica Evermore through her pretty weird adventure. In the beginning Erica's mission is to have fun. But you will soon discover more interesting quests when you explore the marvels of this game.

This release contains part I & II of this game. It's some kind of a demo of work in progress, but also a full game/story with open end. If you want to know how this story ends send me some feedback and motivate me to finish this game.

This game was created using GRAAL (Graphic Adventure Authoring Language) which was written by Per Thulin. GRAAL is a great thing if you hate nasty "low level" programming and still want to create a graphic adventure. Check it out!

Ripper Review

As you will all be No doubt Aware, I am an avid fan of all Adventure type of Games. The unfortunate thing About This type of game is,
It takes such a long time to play and therefore is very Hard to Review.

Unfortunately "Muscarine or Eric's Trip" was uploaded on to the Aminet just prior to the release of this Issue, Therefore I have not had sufficient time to complete the Game, Therefore this review is based on what I have managed to Play so far, However this should give a reasonable review of the overall potential of Rainer's game!

Graphic's

Ok! Myst it is not! But then again the game is Free so you can't expect to Much! In general the Game Graphic's are fairly basic, and obviously drawn in a standard Paint Package such as Delux paint of Personal Paint. The background screens are flat and single coloured (Green for Grass..Blue for sky etc.) However! and strangely enough, Because this game is billed as a Surreal Graphic Adventure, This seems to fit in with what you expect and the quality of the Art work actually works well with the overall feel of the game!

Sound

The sound effects and background Music fits in well with the Feel of the game, with out being to overpowering or annoying. To often in PD games I feel that the Music is distracting and my hand immediately moves to the Monitor Volume control, Not so with "Muscarine" I played the game and happily listened to the Sound files.

Game Play

Well you have to remember this is a surreal Adventure, So expect the Unexpected! You start off in the Game as a small Girl, and as you progress you seem to turn into what I can only refer to as a SLUG type creature with

Well regardless of which MODE of Character you are in at the time, The game Sprites move neatly and Smoothly over the screen, and the Animation work well. There is the ODD occasion that the main Character "Erica" Seems to lose its colour, Becoming almost Invisible and disappearing into the Background, However you can still see enough to be able to carry on playing the game.

As I keep pointing out, This IS a Surreal Adventure, So don't expect the answers to some of the Puzzles to be Straight forward! and Rather than Spoil the game for you I will just say... You may have to use the Toilet for a rather unusual Reason!

The game is certainly Large and Varied, and you eventually travel to various Planets in your quest to "Destroy the Universe"

Conclusions

Dam It All! Don't ak me why!...But I am totally Hooked by this game, and just can't stop playing it.

Ok! Its Basic, Corny even Cheesy, But God its not only Funny but its fun to play. If you just want to immerse your self in a silly, Unserious Adventure type game for a couple of hours then Muscarine is the game for you!

Rainer the Author is from Germany, And several of the Translations to English throw up the odd spelling error, But nothing that you can't work out by using Common sense!

Availability

"Muscarine" is freely available to Download from the Internet, Just visit the Aminet site. Rainer has kindly agreed that we (Raising Hell Productions) can Distribute the Game files via Floppy disk to ANY reader without Internet Access ( Just write to my Postal address and I will send you the files free of charge )