Horrorsoft Games

Elvira Mistress of the Dark

   

Horrorsoft as the companyname suggest only made games, mostly RPG's, that had a horror theme to them. The first game I every played from this company is this one called Elvira mistress of the dark. You have been called upon by Elvira who has been kidnapped and who is now being held captive inside her own castle. Upon arriving in the castle you are quickly captured without much of a chance to do anything and Elvira has to come to your rescue. The game's not over yet though as she has lost her powers and now you have to find items and potions to help get her magic back so she get back her castle.

After you get out of jail Elvira instructs you to find her potions and you set off to find them somewhere inside the castle. You get some basic equipment like a sword and you're gonna need it because the castle is filled with guard who will try to stop you. Actually you don't have to fight them most of the time but usually they are guarding an entrance so you'll have to fight them eventually. Fights are seen from a third person view and you have only two options namely trust and parry, you have to actually time both of them and not go all crazy pressing buttons.

The interface uses a fairly standard layout with the main view taking up most of the screen and to the sides you can find things like actions (examine, take, etc.) and movement. On the bottom of the screen your inventory is shown and text whenever you meet people who want to talk instead of fighting. Unfortunately you can't move using the cursor keys which would have been a bit easier than only using the buttons on the screen.

Elvira was only the second game to come from horrorsoft, their first being a game called personal nightmare in which Elvira also made an appearance. The control scheme has some flaws but they get the job done and you'll learn to live with it. The graphics are pretty good but consists mostly of stills as there is not alot of animation. Overall the game is fairly enjoyable and unlike some of the later games the graphic violence is mostly limited to death scenes.

Elvira 2: Jaws of Cerberus

   

After the success(?) of Elvira - Mistress Of The Dark, Horrorsoft released

its successor - The Jaws Of Cerberus. The object is to free Elvira again;

this time she has been captured by a weird demon. The basic concept of the

game is very similar to its predecessor - a decent mixture of adventure,

action & RPG elements. Changes include a new hitpoint system, which counts

hitpoints for several body parts seperately. The action part was "adapted"

to the Dungeon Master-style: instead of 2D-Sequences, the player

encounters and fights the opponents within the 3D-Frames. Another change

is that the player can talk to some characters in the game, which are

needed to solve the game. Like in Elvira 1, digitized videos scenes show

up from time to time in the game. But what's the real change now? Well,

the game area is certainly bigger than in Elvira 1, there are more puzzles

to solve, more weapons available and more enemies to defeat!

This time we start in front of a Horror Film studio. After we discover the

gatekeeper is not around, we break the window of the gatehouse door and

walk in. We open the wardrobe and hey there is the gatekeeper - covered in

blood. We take the keys and walk into the main building. We spot some

toilets and an elevator, which leads us to 3 other floors. No real fights

take place yet, we mostly pick up items here that prove useful later on.

Leaving the entrance room, we get access to 3 studios: A horror house, a

church with catacombs and another maze. The latter one contains tough

enemies which can't be defeated at this point. The church isn't too

attractive yet either, so we start at the horror house. We notice that

there's no enemies here, but a lot of rooms with lots of puzzles to solve.

After having completed most or all of them, we're ready for the church. We

discover a dead priest here who needs to be resurrected later on. The

catacomb maze under the church needs to be cartographed, which is some

tedious work - automapping wasn't used at that time. Additionally a lot of

enemies need to be defeated - basically the opposite of the horror house.

The last studio is similar - some cartography work and a lot of tough

opponents. After solving a studio a "fake" Elvira shows up and needs to be

killed, except in the studio that is solved last. Then Cerberus can be

finally defeated in the front yard right where the whole game started -

provided the priest has drawn a pentagram and we got all necessary stuff

by then. Like in Elvira 1, spells can be mixed to defeat enemies, heal

oneself or solve certain puzzles. Unfortunately, _MAJOR_ items can be

wasted with the spells. This is extremely annoying, because one can get

stuck forever easily. The puzzles in general are also more tough than in

Elvira 1. If you don't get frustrated because of that, Elvira II is a

*GREAT* game. Graphics and sound are slightly improved in comparison to

E1, in particular there's more different ways to die now, all with their

own graphics. If you like severed heads and unpleasant ways of deaths

though, the successor Waxworks has still even more to offer ;-)

Elvira 3: Waxworks

 

Ye who enter, abandon all hope!. Ye of weak stomachs, abandon all lunch! Mwahahahaha!

You’ll meet Egyptian pyramid guards, zombies, mutants, policemen and many more, with one simple goal in mind. They all wish to see your life depart from your body; weather by scratching you to pieces, infesting you with flesh eating fungus, or simply by hanging you on a good old fashioned noose.

Although this is an adventure game it feels quite like an RPG as well. You move around mazes with creatures coming towards you that you need to escape or fight. And it’s these battles I really disliked about the game. Also you’ll be gathering experience and will get hurt in battle. You will also progress through different levels within each of the settings. This definitely makes this game an adventure with a strong RPG aftertaste (or vice versa).

The graphics of the game are gruesome 256 color VGA graphics with some very violent scenes. This game is extremely bloody and children may get nightmares. Otherwise the 3D effects while walking through the exhibit are nicely done, but it’s all 2D only. Still you’ll first only see a shadow in the distance before engaging a creature meaning you extreme harm.

 

The sounds are a different story. You’ll get quite a mysterious and mood setting tune at the beginning, but it will get boring soon as it’s quite repetitive and not all that enjoyable. But then again, the mood should be eerie. The tune will change however, when you will engage yourself in a fight. The game features no speech, but there are some sound effects, unfortunately they’re not something to really shout about.

But this game isn’t simply a mixture of different horrifying scenes. No, there is a diabolical plotline to it as well. Your uncle’s manservant hands you an old family artifact, a crystal ball. As you gaze in it, your uncle appears to explain the entire story to you.

For the last five generations in your family, twins have been born. One was always good and the other was the extreme opposite - twisted, sadistic, evil and not even a bit nice. Your uncle has gathered the four evil twins in his waxworks and you must stop them in order to break the curse a witch cast over your family. With the help of magic you’ll be able to enter the worlds of these twins (enter the waxworks) and dispose of them and destroy the power that feeds the curse.

Before entering a waxwork you are suggested to read the plaque in front of it, for it will give you some insight of what unspoken devious horror lurks upon you once beyond the magical barrier. You will also learn a bit more about your family history (like the fact that the true evil of was born within your family already in the times of ancient Egypt), where one of your ancestors became a high priest of the god Anubis (no, not our lovable Abandonia forum member).

Basically you’ll get a game with 5 different settings (all being sordid and sinister) where you need to solve a few puzzles and avoid getting killed. These settings will take you from the ancient Egypt; through the undefined middle aged period, through the Victorian England, pass the great mining accident in the early 20th century, to the witch herself.

You can move forwards and backwards or turn left or right. When you click on an object a number of options appears and it lets you know how you can interact with that object. There’s an open palm icon that let’s you pick up stuff. The crystal ball lets you communicate with your uncle. The compass lets you change from the direction view to the compass view (the compass is a bit more helpful). The hammer icon lets you select the weapon and the swords icon lets you fight. While fighting, you can aim for the various parts of the body. Different opponents need to be hit in a different part of the body (but you’ll figure this out as you go along).

Just remember to save often and remember where you were while saving. This game is mostly about finding your way around the labyrinths (I love those), so the maps are the real walkthrough (without them you’d be lost :).

There are many ways to die, so remember to save often, but make sure you remember where in the labyrinth you were when saving. You can find help by gazing in the crystal ball. GET BACK HERE! I didn’t mean for you to rush off to the local gypsy fortune teller. I meant the crystal ball within the game.

All experience points and items collected in a waxwork will automatically disappear upon completing it, so you can’t carry items from one exhibit to the next.

All in all Waxworks is a solid mixture of RPG and adventure genres, but a bit too much fighting for my taste. Otherwise this would be an excellent dark nightmarish adventure, just a thing to play on Halloween, or on a Friday the 13th, or just before visiting your mad scientist neighbor and reclaiming your brain. Mwahahahaha!

Technical note:

The game has been cracked, but it is possible that you may need to crack it again (the crack file is included). It seems the crack doesn't work well if you run setup.exe first, so don't run that file!

Warning:

The game is very bloody and violent, not to mention it can get down right scary. So don’t play it if you don’t have the nerves for it and above all: you’re playing it at your own risk, so don’t blame me for your nightmares. ;)

Elvira The Arcade Game

A platform game based on the well-known mistress of the dark popularized by Horrorsoft's RPGs, Elvira: The Arcade Game have 2 worlds, fire and ice. The two, huge levels are not very different. There are many weapons and power-ups Elvira can pick up. You have to kill many different enemies until you have solved the game.

Personal Nightmare

 

Like the name implies, Personal Nightmare is a horror game. The intro only shows a man being hit by lightning in a church, then transforming him into the devil. If you ask me, that makes it awesome. However it doesn't explain what the player has to do. After doing some research online, I found the plot behind Personal Nightmare:

Your father is the pastor of your village. A strange letter from him made you decide to return to your village, only to find out your father is nowhere to be found, and everyone is hostile and strange. You have to find out what's going on and what happened to your father. My guess is that the guy being struck by lightning is the man in question. By playing the game, you discover that evil forces have taken over the people of the village.

The theme of the adventure is to find and expose the evil people by getting evidence against them and having them arrested; There's not only "normal" sinners, like murderers and adulterers, but you'll have to dispose of a witch, a vampire, a hell-hound and finally the Devil himself. I'm not really sure why, but you must complete the game before the next sermon at the village church - which is in 4 days!

Every few minutes, the game will tell you that another hour has passed. I rather enjoyed this, as a time constraint really pushes the player to do less random exploring and focus on the task from the get-go.

The interface is very similar to that of Frederik Pohl's Gateway: you tell the game what you want to do by typing sentences in. The center of the screen shows what the player is currently looking at (the room you're in), on the left is a compass which shows which way you can go, and on the right is a list of verbs that the game understands.

There is some good news for the lazier among you: like Gateway, the mouse is supported and does wonders to speed up gameplay. For example, you can click on a verb (Open) and an object (cabinet), and the words appear at the bottom. You just have to press Enter. I know many adventure games have point-and-click interfaces, but remember this game was made in 1989! Speaking of which, here's an interesting bit of trivia: Personal Nightmare was released on the 31st of December 1989.

Due to its age, you'll only find 16 colors in the game. Still, that only impacts the graphic window, which is still detailed enough to clearly show the objects in the area. There's even a bit of animation: you'll see people walking along the sidewalk, a taxi coming to the local pub to pick up someone who's had one too many... it's not much but it improves the atmosphere and gives you the feeling of exploring a living world.