| Keepsake | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Developer(s) | Wicked Studios |
| Publisher(s) | The Adventure Company |
| Released | 2006-03-31 (USA) |
| Genre | Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single Player |
| Ratings | ESRB: Everyone |
| Platform(s) | Windows |
| System requirements | Windows 2000/XP 1.5 GHz Intel Pentium III or Equivalent |
| Input methods | Keyboard, Mouse |
Keepsake is an adventure game developed by Wicked Studios.
Contents |
Plot
Lydia, the main character, has just arrived at Dragonvale Academy, a school of magic. Her best friend, Celeste, agreed to meet her outside the school at a nearby fountain, but when Lydia arrives, the school is deserted and Celeste is nowhere to be found. With the help of a wolf (who claims to be both a dragon and a familiar to a powerful mage) named Zak, Lydia sets out to find out what happened at Dragonvale Academy that caused the disappearance of hundreds of people and to reunite with her best friend.
Gameplay
Keepsake is a third person point-and-click adventure game in which the user clicks areas on the screen to navigate and explore the world. The world is set up through fixed camera angles showing the portion of the area that the main character, Lydia, stands in. The user can click different locations and items to move, activate puzzles or cutscenes, and enter other areas. The game is played through exploring the world and solving puzzles to advance. The total gameplay length is estimated at 15 hours.
Reception
The game received mixed reviews. The game received a score of 5.7 out of 10 from GameSpot, who commented on the game's lackluster plot but interesting puzzles. IGN gave the game a 7.2 rating out of 10, noting the second half of the game "included impossibly difficult puzzles that didn't make sense most of the time". Currently the game has accumulated a 68% rating on Metacritic.
Development history
The engine behind Keepsake is called Glyph. It is mostly built on open source projects. The developers stated that the main reason for that was the cross-platform issue. The game 3D engine is Crystal Space; it works on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. The sound engine uses DirectSound3D, but it can also support OpenAL for cross-platform.[1][2] This was verified by the developers examining the game and seeing the presence of several Crystal Space components. All attempts to contact the Keepsake developers by the Crystal Space developers for dialogue and feedback were ignored though. A patch was released for the European version which added a map of the Academy to be displayed from the game control console[3]. The map was purely for display; the player could not use it for quick navigation to a room as in Simon the Sorceror.
References
- ^ Interview with President of Wicked Studios
- ^ Projects Using Crystal Space
- ^ Keepsake UK gets a mini-map. adventuregamers.com. Retrieved on 2007-05-17.
