Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer

aka: Touché : Les aventures du Cinquième Mousquetaire, Touché: Die Abenteuer des fünften Musketiers, Touché: Przygody Piątego Muszkietera, Touché: The Adventures of the 5th Musketeer, Touché: las aventuras del quinto mosquetero
Moby ID: 1114

Description official description

Geoffroi Le Brun, ensign in His Majesty’s musketeers, arrives in the middle of the night in 16th century Rouen, France, to start his new posting at the musketeer headquarters. At the moment he arrives, the unfortunate Comte d’Itee, William de Peuple, is attacked by bandits and his precious will is stolen. Geoffroi offers him, just before he dies, his assistance to find his will.

Of course, getting it back will not be easy, and he must travel back and forth across France to accomplish his quest, visiting the cities of Amiens, St Quentin, Le Mans, Paris, and Le Havre. However, he is assisted by a clever manservant, called Henri, who will be a great help, without any doubt. With some luck, he will hunt the murderer(s) down and find the will. And who knows, maybe he will meet a beautiful lady or find a fortune on the way.

Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer is a humorous, inventory-based point and click adventure game. By right-clicking on a hotspot a context-sensitive action interface pops up, showing the relevant actions. The game is a full talkie with captions, music and sound effects. It features a progressive traveling map, which allows to visit new locations after having solved various puzzles.

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Credits (DOS version)

23 People (22 developers, 1 thanks) · View all

Programming by
Additional Programming by
Story by
Graphics by
with special thanks to
Original Game Design by
Produced by
Lead Tester
Written by
Music by
Featuring the voices of
Testing
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 73% (based on 13 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 17 ratings with 1 reviews)

I want to be a musketeer!

The Good
En guard! Touche! My, my, now here is one rare gem, that didn't gain a lot of popularity due to very limited sales and lack of advertisement. And it should've, I say, as it is a classical adventure at its best.

Well, first of all, the game could be considered as one of those Monkey Island clones. Let me tell you, that it's not true at all. Touche is sure close to MI games by spirit, but at the same time it is a very self-sufficient game, like Simon the Sorcerer (by Adventure Soft). Also the game features one of the most original themes ever met in adventure gaming - I can't remember any other adventure that has its events taken place in medieval France. And don't forget about musketeers!

A man was heading back to the tavern, suspiciously looking around from time to time, when suddenly a group of bandits attacked him and stole something precious from the poor man, living him at the taverns entrance in a pool of blood... At the same time, Geffroi, a young musketeer-wanna-be, appeared in the town, looking for adventures. While heading to the only tavern in town, he was suddenly...no, no, not attacked! He was asked by a dying man for some help. Geffroi had to find the missing will (that was stolen by bandits) and then bring it to Paris. That's how his adventures began...

Yes, that's the story. But what a story! Finding the will is not as easy as it seemed from the beginning. You and your servant Henry (who follows you everywhere, like Max follows Sam) will visit many interesting places on the territory of medieval France, meet lots of entertaining characters (like Cardinal or the nephew of Da Vinci), meet your love in face of beautiful Juliette and, finally, find the lost will and reveal the secret behind it. There are LOTS of things to do in this game!

As you might already have realized, the game is a humorous one. And the humor in Touche is very good, I must say. You'll hear a lot of funny replicas from Geffroi and, especially, from Henry, your trusty servant ("I'm called 'Henry'. Well, actually I'm called a lot of things, but Henry is the only one I answer to.") Also, the situations you'll get in during the journey and the obstacles and people you'll meet are usually on a fun side. The humor, while being very good and original in its own way, sometimes even reaches the level of Monkey Island and other LA games.

The puzzles in the game are mostly traditional inventory-based and all are very well integrated in the plot. Some of them even have several solutions, which is also a nice touch. Also, at some occasions you'll need the help from your servant, Henry, who, while being as dumb and useless as he seems, will do nicely all the dirty work :)

Another nice touches of the game are its graphics and music. 2D backgrounds, while not being hi-tech for its time, are all beautifully drawn and, along with some great music scores, create a wonderful atmosphere.

The Bad
Well, the main reason for the complaints are the characters. I don't know the reason for it, but most of them are just alike each other. Shopkeepers, tavern owners, priests, just ordinary people met at streets are all very much alike. Only the main characters, like Geffroi or Cardinal, differ from all other people in the crowd.

Also, the animation of characters sucks. Well, after awhile you'll get used to it and begin to think of it as the necessary component of the whole gameplay, but nevertheless... It sucks!

The Bottom Line
All in all - a very good adventure on the very original theme. Apart from some graphical flaws, I can't name any reason to dislike the game. The gameplay, the story, the puzzles and the humor make Touché a very enjoyable experience that even can be compared to all-time classics like Monkey Island, Sam and Max or Simon the Sorcerer. The game is even worth playing just for the sake of its ending - it's awfully funny!

DOS · by Afex Tween (129) · 2004

Trivia

Development history

Most of the work on the game was done at an office attached to the house of Graham Lilley in Birmingham, a hideaway built by the previous owner.

He recalls the memory problems, as Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer was a DOS game and was originally restricted to 2 MB of memory and a CD-ROM. He was running 256 color SVGA and had some huge scrolling (at that time) artwork loaded so they were very tight. He used a DOS extender and a 32 bit compiler from Watcom. This memory issue restricted the number of characters that could be loaded and in fact some were painted on the backdrop and just their heads and arms were animated.

Lilley got only one production copy from the distributors, probably a casualty of U.S. Gold Ltd.'s demise which happened as the game was released. Only a CD-ROM, no box or manual.

Graphics

Teoman Irmak was the only artist working on the game. It took him about a year and a half to finish everything, characters and animation included. Locations took 3 or 4 days, the scrolling screens about a week each. Backgrounds were started with pencil drawings and than done in traditional watercolors. Regardless of the requirements of the script, his personal quest for the project was "the property of light."

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Related Sites +

  • Game Nostalgia
    Provides extensive background info for Touché: the Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer, pictures of the cast and examples of voice-overs, credits, specific details about the game, all musical themes, shots of every location in the game, saved games, a list of reviews and tech specs.
  • ScummVM
    supports Touché under Windows, Linux, Macintosh and other platforms.

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  • MobyGames ID: 1114
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by MAT.

Additional contributors: JRK, Kaminari, lobo rojo, Alaka, Havoc Crow, formercontrib, martin jurgens, game nostalgia, Macs Black.

Game added March 21, 2000. Last modified August 30, 2023.