Lost Chronicles of Zerzura

Lost Chronicles of Zerzura
by Cranberry Productions - June, 2014

Available at:
Steam



Join a young inventor on the expedition of his life. A remarkable journey from Spain, across the Mediterranean, to distant Africa; a quest to save his own soul and lives of those he holds most dear.

Two brothers operate a workshop that is well ahead of its time in Barcelona of 1514. It's the time of the golden epoch of the Renaissance, a time of discoveries and inventions; but also the brutal age of the Inquisition.

One brother puts all his efforts into building a flying machine, while the other dreams of Egypt and mysterious art treasures. The advanced ideas and exotic fantasies weaved by the pair arouses the suspicions of the Grand Inquisitor.

Quite suddenly their small world is turned upside down as one brother is taken away by the Inquisition; leaving the other alone to search for answers that will set his imprisoned sibling free.

Explore the ravishingly beautiful and detailed locations of this remarkable adventure as you become immersed in this mysterious medieval tale and solve a unique combination of puzzles, mini-games, and other challenges that are perfectly integrated within this breathtaking storyline.

Evade further attacks by the inquisition, and forge strong alliances with those you meet along the way. Trek across different countries and cultures and eventually to the legendary desert city of ZERZURA, where an ancient terror guards over powerful secrets - and poses the greatest challenge of all!

Lost Chronicles of Zerzura (Adventure)

There are three tabs in the Settings panel:  Game, Graphics, and Sound.  Options include subtitles, game cursor, additional help, and hotspot indicator under Game; screen resolution from 640x480 up to 1920x1080, gamma (brightness), and quality under "Graph."; and separate sliders for general, music, speech, effects, and environment.

This is a classic point-and-click style adventure game, hence you'll need to save manually.  I completely forgot about this until the moment I got killed, and that sinking feeling of, "Oh no... do I have to do all of that again?   " was quickly dispelled by the game's auto-save (blessed be!)  Still, to be safe, I HIGHLY recommend saving often!

One irritation that I frequently see voiced about this kind of adventure is that the characters walk. so. slowly.  Not an issue in this game!   Your character automatically runs anywhere you click on the screen, and you can double-click on exits to skip the running altogether.

The game progresses via voiced-over, simple cutscenes, whilst the rest of the graphics are quite detailed and lovely to look at.  The voices are done well, but the music annoyed me.  Good thing we have those sliders for the sounds!

There are a few issues with the subtitles, in that sometimes the actors aren't saying exactly what's written on the screen.  It's a bit jarring when it comes up, but not so much that I wanted to turn off the subtitles.

Interactions with other characters are pretty straightforward -- click on them to talk to them, then choose an image that represents what you'd like to talk about.  Our character's text is white, whilst other characters have their own colors.  Very nice, as it helps you distinguish who's talking, on the off chance that you don't recognize their voice.  You don't have to wait for the people to finish speaking if you're a fast reader -- simply click anywhere to move the conversation along.

Bring your cursor to the bottom of the screen to see your inventory, and to the top of the screen to see the options there:  Magnifying glass (hotspot indicator), Papers (save/load game), and a Book (your diary.)  Sadly, the diary sometimes mentions things that you haven't discovered yet, so I only read it occasionally.

Your inventory is easily managed.  Hover your mouse over an item to see the object's title (ie. carved stone,) and right-click to examine it more closely or to consume it.  Grab something from your inventory and drop it on another item to combine them.  If you'd like to save some time, anywhere you can use an object -- whether it's a specific place on the screen or by combining it -- the cursor will gradually turn red when it's an action you can take.  For instance (completely made up, this isn't a spoiler,) say you have a loaf of bread and a knife in your inventory.  Grab the knife, hold it over the loaf of bread, and if if you need sliced bread for something, the cursor will start to turn red.  You could just drop it on the loaf of bread and skip that entirely, but when you have 15 things in your possession, and you're not sure what you're supposed to be doing, it's a real time-saver!

I played without extra help (although I did have to use the hotspot indicator), and all of the tasks I was able to figure out eventually. This is a game with mostly-logical actions, which is something I highly appreciate!  My one point of contention is that sometimes I would find something I KNEW I needed to interact with, but nothing in my inventory worked!  Save yourself some frustration, and click on interesting areas more than once to see if anything changes.  Wish I'd known that sooner!

This, like most point-and-click adventures, is a slow-paced game, though it does have its moments.  The story is interesting enough, and the devs did a pretty good job keeping anachronisms out of the game.

This was a nice stop-down from the action-adventures I've been playing lately.  I'd say it's definitely worth playing.