Summary
Boogle, let's go
The Good
Al Lowe, the creator of the
Leisure Suit Larry series, shows how good he can make a game. He took a break from the LSL series after creating
Leisure Suit Larry 6, and focus on creating an adventure game that would appeal to kids rather than adults. In
Torin's Passage, you play Torin, who is desperately searching for his parents who get imprisoned in a magical spell by the evil witch, Lycentia, and banished to a faraway land. To do this, he must travel to four distant worlds known as “The Lands Below”.
When I played this game, I saw straight away that this is a game aimed at kids. You see, many children's movie have someone following the main character (master) wherever they go, and help them on their mission, if help is needed. This situation is the same in
Torin's Passage. Following you is Torin's pet dog-like creature called Boogle, who can transform into objects in order to help him get through the worlds.
A major thing that I noticed straight away is the bizarre interface at the bottom of the screen. The inventory is at the bottom of the screen, but it is not a rectangle like in
King's Quest VII, but in a trapezium. I think this is used to hold more objects. Inside the trapezium there is a circle that represents the “scanning platform”. If you pick up an object and put it on that platform, a larger version of the object will appear on screen. A VCR-like interface allows you to take a good look at that object. There are also two buttons above it. One button displays Torin's inventory, while the other displays shapes that Boogle can transform into.
Other goodies in the interface allow you to get a hint from the game as what to do next if you get stuck. Like the
Tex Murphy interactive movie/adventure games, you are sacrificing a few points if you decide to use it. Another useful feature is the Windows-style Tooltips, which are useful if you are not sure what objects or the different gadgets in the interface are.
The graphics are similar to those used in KQ7 and
LSL7, since Sierra aimed at creating Disney-like graphics for their later games. I especially liked the graphics displayed in “The Lands Above” chapter and the screen allowing you to pick a chapter to start at. The Earth is the best that I've seen in a Sierra game.
The sound effects are what you have heard from old cartoon shows such as Bugs Bunny, and are more appropriate for a Disney-style game like this. The music is excellent. The best pieces that I like are when Torin is starting out on his quest and is faced with a puzzle.
There is some humor in the game. One bit of humor that I remember is when you try to catch the silkworms, but when you try to drag your mouse over them, they hide behind their leaves. This reminds me of the days when I played
The Secret of Monkey Island where dragging the mouse cursor over The Men of Low Moral Fiber's rat scares the hell out of it, and doing it repeatedly makes it run away.
There are a few puzzles in the game, but they are not hard. Although I'm not a fan of puzzles, they are quite amusing if you stuff up. The only difficult puzzle is to rearrange nine tiles to make a face.
The Bad
The introduction consists of an FMV sequence, which gets crammed into a small rectangle in the middle of the screen, and the space that surrounds it is wasted with pure black. Why Sierra chose not to fill the entire screen with it is beyond me.
As bizarre as it may seem, the interface takes up a lot of room that could be reserved for more action. The interface in KQ7 is better than this. However, that is the way that Sierra designed later games, so I guess that we have to get used to this thing.
The Bottom Line
Torin's Passage is a game designed for everyone, but especially for kids, and features a storyline that is quite like those in many children's movies, and has a secondary character that can help you in your quest. The game features nice graphics and sound, which is consistent to later
Sierra games. It also features such a bizarre interface that contain gadgets that may or may not be of use to you. Since Al Lowe created
Torin's Passage, you can also expect some humor added to the mix. The game was to be the first in the series, but the idea of making sequels was scrapped.
