Escape from Delirium

Moby ID: 2088

Description official description

Amateur made, shareware imitation of Monkey Island 2 / Simon the Sorceror. But don't let that put you off - this is a quality game in its own right. You are adventurer Paul Cole, the year is 1948, and you have been lowered down a pit to investigate a the discovery of a corpse. Then you find you cannot get out. The rest is up to you!

The main difference between this and another LucasArts' SCUMM engine game is the lack of obvious humor. It seems to take itself very seriously.

Screenshots

Credits (DOS version)

7 People (4 developers, 3 thanks) · View all

Story
Code
Graphics
Animations
Story System
Animation System
Tools
Install
Room Editing
Script Compiler
Design
Ideas
Music
Additional Design
Sound-effects
'Garbage' System
Thanks to Beta Testers
Infotexts
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Players

Average score: 2.5 out of 5 (based on 12 ratings with 1 reviews)

Ouch... awful writing!

The Good
Escape from Delirium is a homemade adventure game inspired by Monkey Island 2. Paul Cole looks very similar to Guybrush Threepwood and the interface also has a lot in common with Monkey Island 2. Moreover there are references to MI all over this game.

Technically, Escape from Delirium, works fine (except for some parts of the game where you can pick up the same item over and over again). It isn't exactly a short game too. To me the game appeared as a completed whole, which is not a small achievement for a homemade game.

Moreover, the game has its funny moments (although certainly not the laugh out loud humor of Monkey Island); some of the animations are quite nice (especially during the introductory part of the game, the music is not too bad and the game contains some jokes that could not have been in this game if it had been released by a corporate giant.

The Bad
Unfortunately this game suffers from truly bad writing. The storyline, for example, starts out promising but ends up making no sense at all. You're witnessing a burglary at a museum and since your name was in the newspaper (printing the name of a witness in a newspaper of course doesn't make a lot of sense) the thieves want to kill you. So they put a time bomb on the plane that takes you to Washington. There is however also a hijacker on the plane and he sends the plane to the Philippines. When the bomb goes off, you crash-land in a jungle. So far, so good. But instead of finding a way home or trying to convict the criminals you end up [warning: spoiler] reviving an ancient warrior. It just makes no sense at all.

Also, the dialogues are all very boring, so are Paul Cole & the other characters and the descriptions of items. Almost every time you look at an object the description will be something like this: it's a rock, nice snake, a chair etc. That doesn't make the game very interesting.

During the game you collect a lot of items so your inventory becomes very full. A lot of the puzzles are a bit illogical and so the gameplay turns into the usual "combine everything from your inventory with everything on the screen-clickfest". This takes a lot of the pace out of the game. This is made worse by the way the game responds to your actions. For example there is a part of the game [spoiler] where you have use an iron crowbar to break a big stone into little stones. This works with one of the stones, but if you use your crowbar on another stone lying next to it, the game responds by saying: "Do you think this makes sense?". Things like this happen a lot in this game. These standard responses are not helpful at all. Paul Cole should have responded by saying something like: "this stone is too hard" or something. It's like the developers didn't really think about all the options the player has.

The Bottom Line
I know that this is a homemade game and I shouldn't be too hard on it since the developers probably lacked funding and man-hours (so I won’t complain about the graphics, they look a lot like MI 2 while Escape from Delirium was released 5 years later). However this game’s biggest faults are its lame storyline and writing. Imagination & common sense have never been expensive.

DOS · by Roedie (5239) · 2001

Trivia

References

  • The hero looks suspiciously like Guybrush Threepwood from Monkey Island 2 - and the game even begins with him hanging from a rope.
  • In the village (next to the police officer) there is a statue of a monster from DOOM, left-click on it, watch Paul Cole draw a shotgun and see what happens.
  • The game features cameo roles by Saddam Hussein (in the plane), Bill Gates (crucified, in the village). and Admiral Thrawn from Star Wars (in the fun house).
  • The fortune teller is this game is called Jojo. Her brother is Mojo from Monkey Island.
  • There is a parrot by the temple who references the parrot scene in Tikal from Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.
  • There is a radioactive pool with a warning sign, complete with a "reactor" once it's drained. Paul even comments that it reminds him of some other game.... we know it's Maniac Mansion.
  • There are major visual callbacks to Simon the Sorcerer, including non-story animated animals and even a worm-eaten tree trunk that looks like the woodworm.
  • An unusually artistic scene with a hill overlook and expansive night sky, with a thornbush and heart, seems to reference Loom.
  • When you turn on the computer in the temple, the screen displays the view from an X-Wings cockpit.

Information also contributed by Roedie

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  • MobyGames ID: 2088
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Chris Tolworthy.

Additional contributors: Jeanne, Patrick Bregger, kj gaia.

Game added August 1, 2000. Last modified February 22, 2023.