Mindshadow

The Good
Mindshadow is a graphic adventure game from Interplay, a company that doesn't really create adventure games, but action ones which are far too many to mention her. You are stranded on a desert island, with no memory of who you are or what you are doing there. Your main goal is to escape the island, and piece together clues to your identity. The action takes place on board a pirate ship, in England, and in Luxembourg.

One thing that I noticed straight away is how well the interface is laid out. The top half of the screen has the main graphics being accompanied by a word list, containing commands that are recognized by the game. Below this you have the inventory in the form of pictures of the items you picked up. Next to that is a compass, showing all the possible exits. And below all of this, you have the text input which contains an accurate description with a impressive transition where the text appears line by line, instead of all at once.

The graphics are quite colorful, and what's displayed matches its description. As I just mentioned, the word list is useful for letting you know what commands are recognized by the game, but other commands not on the list are also recognized by the game (eg: examine). The function keys provide shortcuts to ten commands, like save/load, repeat last command, help, drop, and get all. Help comes in the form of a condor, a large bird which is drawn nicely, that will point you in the right direction if you get stuck.

I like how you can gather clues throughout the adventure, and then your whole story is displayed at the end of the game. Before the start of the game, you can access the text-only tutorial that will teach you how to play an adventure game if you haven't done so, and you can even enter commands to get through it. This is a neat feature, and I haven't seen this before in any adventure before it.

The Bad
A maximum of seven or eight items can be displayed in your inventory, and so you have to drop one of your items if it is full. I was in this situation once, so I dropped the shell, not realizing that the item you need at the end of the game is the shell (of all things!). And once you realize that you need an item, it is difficult to go back and retrieve it if you are far away from it.

The Bottom Line
Mindshadow is a pretty good game from Interplay, a company that does not normally do adventures. It certainly beats the old text-only adventure from Intercom, and the Amiga version is better than its 8-bit cousins when it comes to the number of interfacial elements. The helpful word list contains commands that are recognized by the game, so you can't go wrong with them.The graphics are great, and the player can gather clues as they play through the adventure.