Posted By
orion70
on 2024-09-30
10:31:20
 |  Athanor, complete solution (ENG) and map
Hello there. As promised, I had fun playing another adventure, this time the excellent Athanor I - The Awakening by Majikeyric (Erik Safar).
In this great graphic text adventure, you play the role of a visitor coming to an abbey in Southern Italy in the 12th Century. As a Franciscan monk, you investigate the mysteries lying within this abbey. The physical copy of the game, which came for all major 8-bit platforms, was complete with a lot of "feelies", much in the style of Infocom masterpieces, an hand-drawn map, and more. You must overcome a lot of intricate puzzles, explore places within the labyrinthic abbey, talk to strange people, and finally find out that your quest is... only at the beginning!
A true tribute to the heyday of Melbourne House, Infocom, and Magnetic Scrolls.
Overall, I had a lot of fun playing this adventure with a Plussy emulator, and gave it a round vote of 8. Nevertheless, if I may dare, I must underline some weak points, which may or may not prevent people from trying it:
- You can't save your game. It's a LONG quest, but it must be played through in one big session on the real machine(s). Which is not a problem using the emulator's snapshots of course.
- The parser is limited, and you must hunt for the correct sentence most of the time.
- The map is VERY strangely designed. Most passages in the courtyard and cells are either one-way, or circular (e.g., going in one direction makes you return to the starting point). There's a lot of confusion between "going" in one direction and "facing" one direction. Maybe helping yourself with the provided plan of the abbey sometimes is more useful than using the map I did.
- In some locations, things are invisible, or sometimes they are visible but disappear at the second visit (e.g. the peasant lady, who is still there but not visible in the picture anymore when you return in her location towards the end of the quest).
- Some puzzles are difficult to realize, even using the physical clues. I had to stick to the French solution to figure out.
- The overall picture of the adventure's plot is somehow "too big to be true". Within the frame of a 12th Century abbey located in Southern Italy, IMHO it would have been more realistic - and would have added to the atmosphere of the game - to stay in the boundaries of plausible events. I don't want to spoiler anything, and this is only my personal opinion and taste, but a "simple" plot of black magic within the abbey would have been enough to stimulate the user's fantasy. The final revelation is indeed a bit... *too much* 
Thanks again to Majikeyric for this effort - hope it will inspire other authors to create more adventures with an historical background!
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