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Altered Destiny

Moby ID: 92
DOS Specs

Description official descriptions

One fine day P. J. Barrett, an ordinary human being from the planet Earth, goes to a repair shop to get his TV set fixed. When he comes back for it, he accidentally picks up the wrong one. No big deal? Quite on the contrary. When the unsuspecting Mr. Barrett returns home and turns the TV on, he is sucked into a portal! One moment later, he finds himself on the strange planet of Daltere. Naturally, this planet needs a savior: the evil alien Helmar has stolen an artifact known as the Jewel of Light, thus endangering the entire galaxy. Now our unlikely hero has to overcome various obstacles and save the world.

Altered Destiny is a puzzle-solving adventure game. The interface is very similar to the one used in the Les Manley games by the same company. The navigation can be done with the mouse (point-and-click), but the game still requires text input to issue commands to the hero and to interact with the world.

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Credits (DOS version)

27 People (22 developers, 5 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 64% (based on 10 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 17 ratings with 2 reviews)

Excellent old graphic adventure.

The Good
Was in the same class as the lucasarts games but the animation and graphics seemed to be better.

The Bad
It was kind of hard. But to some people thats a good thing.

The Bottom Line
Wierd graphic adventure. Suitable for old EGA systems.

DOS · by gametrader (208) · 2000

Death by natural selection?

The Good
The game-world is very atmospheric. It's weird, hallucinatory, and psychedelic, and has music to match (Stockhausen anyone?).

There have been a lot of adventure games set in similar fantasy worlds in which the weirdness is plain annoying (eg Goblins or Woodruffe and the Schnibble), but here it works well, and has a special, unique charm.

There's very little dialogue (that's good) and the puzzles involve planting crystals, catching birds in golden cages and similar pleasing activities (that's good too),

The Bad
Its got a parser (bit of a pain) and copy protection that kicks in on starting up the game (also annoying). I could cope with those though. The thing that got me really pissed was the point-and-click system, which was poorly implemented so that I kept falling off paths, bridges and the like and had to keep reloading. It was also difficult at times to see where to walk to get into different areas of the game.

I played this for the first time in 2005, but didn't complete it because I needed a crystal that I picked up earlier in the game and subsequently lost. I enjoyed what I played enough to think that I'll probably go back and play it again though.

The Bottom Line
This game shares the same interface as the very down-to-earth no-nonsense Les Manley games made by Accolade at the same time. Unlike Les Manley this is a sprawling fantasy epic, in which the gameplay is flawed. Even so its worth sticking with despite the problems.

I think many of these are common in games of this vintage, and died out of point-and-click adventures as they evolved later in the 90's.

DOS · by jossiejojo (37) · 2005

Trivia

Credits

In the credits, Michael Berlyn gives special thanks to Ennio the Legend. Ennio the Legend is one of the main characters in Tass Times in Tonetown, another game Berlyn designed.

References

When the player types look rock or look stone, he will receive an ironic reply from the game: "A rock is a rock is a rock".

Obviously this is a reference to the sentence by poetess Gertrude Stein: "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose".

Sound

The sound code is extremely finicky - unless one can find the right combination of free RAM, video mode, and sound device, it usually plays through the PC speaker. Adlib and CGA usually works, CMS music seems to be more difficult.

Information also contributed by Boston Low.

Awards

  • Enchanted Realms
  • January 1992 (issue #9) – Distinctive Adventure Award

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  • MobyGames ID: 92
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Trixter.

Windows added by Sciere. Amiga added by Martin Smith.

Additional contributors: Cantillon, Narushima, Victor Vance.

Game added March 9, 1999. Last modified August 2, 2024.