Circle of Blood

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Description

George Stobbart is an American tourist spending his autumn vacation in Paris. He barely escapes a bombing of a café and decides to investigate the clues left behind by the killer. This eventually leads him to a mystery dating back to the legend of the Knights Templar.

Circle of Blood is the first part in the Broken Sword series. It is a third-person puzzle-solving point-and-click adventure game with 2D cartoon-like graphics. The player moves the character around using the mouse, examines the environment, talks to other people and collects items stored in an inventory. These items need to be used or combined with other items to solve puzzles. George gets help from Nicole Collard, a French journalist. The story is divided into eleven chapters and takes place in locations such as Paris, Ireland, Syria, and others.

Screenshots

Promo Images

Trailer

Alternate Titles

• "断剑：圣殿骑士的阴影" -- Simplified Chinese spelling
• "Сломанный Меч: Тень Тамплиеров " -- Russian spelling
• "Slomannyj Mech: Ten' Tamplierov" -- Russian title
• "Les Chevaliers de Baphomet" -- French title
• "BS1" -- Common abbreviation
• "Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars" -- US GBA/PSX, UK PC title
• "Broken Sword: La leyenda de los Templarios" -- Spanish title
• "Broken Sword: Il Segreto dei Templari" -- Italian title
• "Baphomets Fluch" -- German title

Part of the Following Groups

• Broken Sword series
• Console Generation Exclusive: PlayStation
• Game Engine: Virtual Theatre
• Games made into comics
• Middleware: Smacker Video
• Setting: Church / Monastery
• Setting: City - Paris
• Setting: Country - France
• White Label releases

User Reviews

An extremely well-executed adventure for the Game Boy Advance.	Game Boy Advance	Ruben van der Leun (14)
Neither fish nor fowl	Windows	Unicorn Lynx (181391)
Learn about the Templars while searching for the café bomber	Windows	Katakis | カタキス (43217)
A strangely ordinary adventure	Windows	xroox (3956)
One word.....BRILLIANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!	Windows	Grant McLellan (622)
Jones!? You've got some nerve...	Windows	MAT (235303)
The great game that might have been.	Windows	PCGamer77 (3225)
Shadow of the Templars is best described as a "diet coke" of the Adventure genre, only with much better aftertaste.	Windows	Gonchi (3709)
one fine adventure game... and it's not from lucasarts !	Windows	Xa4 (310)
One of the last true adventures of the 90s	Windows	Depth Lord (1003)

Critic Reviews

PC Games	DOS	Dec, 1996	A	100
Adventurearchiv	Windows	Aug 27, 2008	93 out of 100	93
PC Action (Germany)	DOS	Sep, 1996	86 out of 100	86
64 Power / big.N / N Games	Game Boy Advance	Mar, 2002	86 out of 100	86
PC Joker	DOS	Sep, 1996	86 out of 100	86
PC Games (Germany)	DOS	Sep, 1996	85 out of 100	85
GameBoomers	DOS	1996	4 out of 5	80
Yiya	Windows	Aug 20, 2005	11 out of 15	73
Yiya	DOS	Aug 20, 2005	11 out of 15	73
The Good Old Days (Staff Reviews only)	DOS	Jul 22, 2009	4 out of 6	67

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Trivia

1001 Video Games

Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Animation

The game's animations and artwork were done by former animators and artists from Bluth Studios, makers of The Secret of NIMH, An American Tale, The Land Before Time, and the Dragon's Lair and Space Ace interactive arcade laser games.

Engine

The Game Boy Advance version does not use the Virtual Theatre game engine.

Extras

Some versions of the game came with the Knights Templar book Savage Warrior written by Steve Jackson.

Installation

The DOS/Windows installation program instead of showing a progress bar during the copying phase runs a Breakout variant. The paddle is controlled with the mouse.

Music

The game contains over two hours of original music from Britain’s composer Barrington Pheloung, also known for his TV theme music on Central Independent Television’s renowned Inspector Morse detective series starring John Thaw and Kevin Whately.

Information also contributed by Garcia, Rola and Sciere

Related Web Sites

• Broken Sword 1 Hints (Helpful hints for solving Circle of Blood, the North American release of Broken Sword1)
• Circle of Blood - FAQs & Guides (Multiple walkthroughs and faq files (in various languages) on GameFaqs.com)
• How to play in Windows XP (Hakan Larsson explains exactly how to do it)
• ScummVM (Get "Broken Sword I", as well as many other adventure games, to run on modern systems by using ScummVM, a legal and free program.)
• Walkthrough for Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars (Full solution for Circle of Blood/Shadow of the Templars posted on Revolution's web site.)
• Wikipedia: Circle of Blood (Article in the open encyclopedia)