Dark - Lost Pages
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Genre: Action-adventure, maze (Prologue) / First-person shooter.

This game is a B-side of upcoming Big Box release of The Dark. Redux.

The game tells the same story as the main game. Try to collect all the pages of The Book of History.

Prologue is a huge maze that needs to be explored, discovering new parts of it. And then the game turns into FPS with 9 new maps (and they are larger and more diverse than in the main game) and new types of enemies, including a fire-breathing dragon.

All this fits into the 48K without multiloading. And 128K owners get AY music in prologue.



This game is on the B-side of the big box release of The Dark - Redux. The plot and story is the same as in the main game. The game is in two parts and starts with a 2D prologue before turning into a First Person Shooter (fps) game. The prologue takes up 10k and the fps 38k, and if you have a 128k machine there will be AY music in the prologue.

Even if the prologue is only taking up 10k it is incredible huge, and it will be needed to draw a map to keep track of your position. The objective is to collect the 9 pages of the Book of History. These 9 pages are the maps for the 9 levels in the fps part. The prologue takes place in a village, a forest, a cemetery and acropolis. You do not have access to all places from the start and you need to find and use objects to complete this part. The 8 of the 9 pages is hidden in huge yellow vases, and there are many of these placed all over the map, which means that some of them are empty, and to complicate things the placing of the pages will be different from game to game.

You will meet many enemies and you are only armed with a trident, it is not possible to find any gun or ammo in this part, but using the trident rapidly will take care of all the enemies. It is not your health (you can find extra health and armor) that is the problem here - It is to find the right places and the correct route. The prologue is a mix between Tir Na Nog (with lots of routes to walk) and Neanditial (smaller but with puzzles to solve), and with graphics similar to Valley of Rains.

When the 9 pages is collected the game changes into a fps game. If you have played The Dark or The Dark - Redux, you know what to expect here, but the engine has been updated even further, it runs really well, there are new enemies and bigger maps. The layout of the levels is more hidden now, because when pressing "M" you can not see the whole map at once, you will only see the locations around your position. Also a new nice touch is when you have the gun your hand will now go up and down when moving.

The first level is a bit special, you start in the middle of the area next to the exit door. The place is crowded with monsters, you only have your trident, and you have to find the key for the exit door which is placed randomly.

From level 2 the game becomes more similar to The Dark - Redux: You can find ammo for your gun and extra health and armor. From level 2 you only have two attempts to complete the levels, else you will start back from level 1 again. There are different objectives for each of the fps levels, but in most of them you will also need to find and use keys to open up inaccessible areas. 

The flying dragon from the backgrounds in The Dark - Redux is now an enemy here, big spiders also, and some magenta monsters are similar to the yellow ones from the first game. Besides the 3 different enemies new is also spikes to avoid on the ground. In the first game you also had the Hovering Death, big monster enemies, flaming head enemies, acid rain, flying insects, flying dragons in the backgrounds, houses, water and detailed stuff in the background. The 2D prologue is clearly taking up some memory so the fps part is not as detailed and varied as in The Dark - Redux.

Both the prologue and the fps part are of high quality, and there are incredible much gameplay crammed into this 48k game, but it is two very different genres to combine. If you have been looking very much forward to play this new fps game on your Spectrum it might be a problem that you have to complete a Tir Na Nog game first, before the fps part will be accessible. Many people will probably never come to play the fps part unless some cheat / pokes to open up for this becomes available.

A map you could call with "M" for the prologue part just like in the fps part would make this much more playable, and it would not really spoil anything because of the random placing of the pages and the many empty vases you have to check in this very huge playarea - and even if you have a map it takes quite some time to complete. Else the fps part could be selectable from the beginning, but if you had not completed the prologue there would be less ammo available or you could only play with the trident. Something as simple as getting a password when completing the prologue would also solve the problem.

If you are into both the Gargoyle games (Tir Na Nog, Dun Darach, Marsport) and Quake games then this is a 100% winner, but if you are more into checking out the Quake clone, of which there are not many available for the Spectrum, then there is a minor problem here. A v.1.1 with map available for the prologue and password for the fps part would result in a much higher rating here.

The game was made by Oleg Origin / Zosya Entertainment in 2021.

Rating = 91%

Zosya's games can be downloaded for free or bought in high quality big boxed editions here: https://www.zosya.net/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGkNwLQ816g&t=322s