Rite of the Druid
Producer: Paul Weller — Sunteam Free download, ZX Spectrum NEXT
Earning first place in both the Graphics and Storyline categories in this year’s “NEXT Adventure Jam”,
Rite of the Druid is a new graphical adventure for the ZX Spectrum NEXT and the creation of Paul Weller of Sunteam. With Rite of the Druid, Paul has returned to the roots of the more classical style adventure game featuring a text parser with standard verb noun input along with some rather nicely drawn and colourful backgrounds that superbly match each of the game’s locations and showcase the NEXT’s enhanced graphical capabilities.
You play an unnamed character who as part of a small tribe is currently in the process of undergoing a ritual to finally earn the full title of Druid. To achieve this however, Chief Druid Drem tells you that you must first enter another realm that is beyond your own and there find a sacred rune that will ultimately guide your path and return you back to the tribe a fully fledged Druid.
To enter this realm, you have to drink a strange glassful of foulsmelling purple ooze which knocks you unconscious. You soon awaken to find that you are all alone in a strange hilly grassland in the middle of a set of stone circles. And thus, our short yet enjoyable adventure begins…
As mentioned, the game itself is very short with less than twenty-five screens, but it feels bigger and Paul has done a fantastic job of describing each location in fine vivid detail. Just about every location type you can imagine is represented here from grasslands to marshy bogs, sandy deserts to dark caves and snowy mountains to active volcanoes.
There are no characters as such to interact with although there are various animals wandering around, but I’ll leave it to you to work out what purpose they serve.
Object wise there are plenty in the game, most of which must be discovered. With the exception
Atmosphere Graphics: Playability: Getting started: Overall: of only one object that I could find no use for, all the others had a purpose in helping you solve the game’s many puzzles which I found to be well thought out and fairly logical. A welcome addition to the game are the several endings that it features and while each one is only slightly different, I found it fun nonetheless to go back and see how they all played out.
Overall Rite of the Druid is an enjoyable adventure that’s full of atmosphere and ideal if you only have a short amount of time to play.
Great for beginners to the genre.