Beyond the Wall of Stars

A review by Bruce L. Giles
CompuServe 72307,261

Copyright RIPC (c) 1993
Resource International Publishing Company
Route 1, Box 168
Milford, TX 76670

System Requirements: Apple Macintosh with System 6.0.7 or later, 3 MB RAM, 8-bit color and color monitor.

This CD-ROM bills itself as the first multimedia adventure story from R. A. Montgomery, author of the "Choose Your Own Adventure Series." It is subtitled "Quest One of the Taran Trilogy." 

"Beyond the Wall of Stars" is a science-fiction adventure story in which the player takes the role of one of the characters. It features full-screen, full color graphics, including both 3-D artwork and digitized photos. There is limited animation in many scenes, but no QuickTime videos. Sound is used throughout, primarily as endlessly repeating background musical loops.

The adventure begins with a fairly time-consuming title screen, however, clicking the mouse or typing a key bypasses the title screen to take you directly to the table of contents.

From the contents screen, you have several options. You can start the adventure at the beginning, or at several intermediate points. First-time players are directed toward the introduction, which explains the basic premise of the adventure. You are a member of a probe team from the planet Celadon, journeying to another planet called Tara. After signing on as a member of the team, you are given the descriptions and strengths of the other team members, along with their photos. Your first task is to select the team commander from four potential candidates. Once the commander has been selected, the adventure begins.

As the story progresses, you are presented with a number of screens that develop the story line. For most of these, you simply sit, watch the animation, and read the text, all the while listening to the background music. Occasionally, one of the characters has a decision to make, and this brings up an "Option Control" screen, presenting two or more options that the character can take. It's your job to choose one of them. The option you select determines the direction the story takes next. With some of the options, none are particularly right or wrong, just different. The story can take vastly different turns depending on which option you select.

Sometimes you select a choice that quickly turns out to be seriously wrong, and the adventure ends prematurely because of it. Fortunately, there is a button at the bottom of each screen that will take you back to the previous Option Control screen so that you may choose again. Unfortunately, you may have traveled down a path of several wrong choices before you discovered your mistake, but you can not travel back past the most recent option control screen. So, unless you have saved your position (placed a bookmark) at one of those previous screens, you may not be able to recover from your mistake without starting over. In some instances you may be able to back up one screen at a time, though this option is not always enabled.

You may place a bookmark at any screen, giving it a unique name, and you may return to any of these bookmarks at any time. It's often a good idea to place a bookmark at an Option Control screen so that you can return to explore all the possibilities.

In the first major section of the adventure, you explore a planet called Morgan Kara, which is the first stop on the way to Tara. Depending on the various choices made, it is possible to bypass most of this section of the story, but doing so may keep you from succeeding in a later section.

Initially, most of the Option Control screens contain choices to be made by the commander you selected earlier. With some of the options, however, the commander is soon left behind while the story line follows the development of other team members.

Along the way, you may encounter a magic jewel that may prove useful later. Eventually, providing you have made the proper choices, you find your way to the Galaxy Gate. Here you are given a magic word for future reference. You are also provided with your first real challenge: you must solve the puzzle of the runes to progress further. Even this challenge is not particularly difficult though, and in fact, it's fairly easy to solve by clicking the mouse almost at random, without ever truly understanding the puzzle.

In the second major section of the adventure, you're back on board ship, but there is a new problem. The crew is getting mutinous, and the commander is showing signs of breaking under the strain. Eventually you must assume command and attempt to guide the ship toward Tara. On your way, you stop by the planet Kandar for more adventures. Depending on the choices you make here, you may need that jewel or magic word, or you may not. Eventually, you leave Kandar and again proceed toward Tara, which is hidden behind the Great Wall of Stars.

Next, you and your crew members split into several groups in an attempt to locate Tara. One of the crew members is "kidnapped" by a hostile force, and suddenly the adventure ends on this cliffhanger. You are presented with a screen proclaiming "To Be Continued..." and informed that the story continues in volume two of the Taran Trilogy, "Trouble on Tara" (available in early 1993, according to the screen).

"Beyond The Wall of Stars" is an intriguing concept with a lot of promise, but it fails to deliver any real substance. I have refrained from calling it a game, because it really is not a game. There are no points to be scored, few puzzles to be solved, and while the adventure can end prematurely if you choose the wrong options at certain points, you never really win or lose. The options themselves are generally not challenges, but simply choices. You pick one or the other essentially at random, because you have few clues to guide your choice.

Initially, the graphics and the music are impressive, but these soon grow tiring. I found myself frustrated at times when I had to wait for the crude animation to complete before the text appeared. The CD-ROM disc is frequently accessed, and this also causes a number of pauses in the action. There is a fairly large selection of apparently original music, but much of it is in the form of phrases only a few bars long which repeat over and over through a series of several screens.

The story line itself was confusing in a number of places, and sometimes inconsistent. Overall, the various subplots just didn't mesh well. There were times when new characters simply appeared without any introduction or explanation, because the introductions occurred on other "paths" that your particular adventure didn't happen to take. There are also plot lines that appear to go nowhere, either because they were developed further along other paths, or perhaps because they will be developed in one of the other two volumes in the trilogy. The result, however, is that you're often left wondering "Why?" The whole story and style of writing seemed a bit juvenile, as if it were directed more at teenagers than adults. 

Although "Beyond the Wall of Stars" is initially both visually and aurally stimulating, the glitter quickly fades. Not a true game, it seems to be aimed primarily at a teenage audience, and there is probably not enough substance or challenge to satisfy an adult adventure game fan.

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Published by Creative Multimedia Corporation, 514 NW 11th Avenue, Suite 203, Portland, OR 97209. Telephone: (503) 241-4351. Fax: (503) 241-4370

Retail price: $49.99