Necklace
of Skulls was first published as a part of the Virtual Reality
Adventure series in 1993, and has lately been given new life as a
smartphone/tablet application by Cubus Games. Dave Morris recently mentioned that he began writing Necklace of Skulls shortly after a
visit to Central America. And, man alive, it shows. In this story,
you take the part of Evening Star, whose journey across the world to
save his twin brother is a trip through Mayan legend, and even
through the fearful, dark parts of the Mesoamerican psyche that give
birth to such legends.
In
short, it's an extremely distinctive, evocative story. You won't find
any battleaxe-wielding dwarves here. And what Cubus Games have done
right is to precisely match the tone of the app to the atmosphere of
that story. Visually, the artwork and overall feel here have their
roots in the contemporary art of the period, and so the blend of
story and artwork comes across as wholly natural. The app's sound
effects are apt, as well. Sound is something I'll rarely pay much
attention to in an IF app - incessant bleeping or sword-swishing
noises usually just get on my nerves. But Cubus have done a great job
here in terms of ambient sounds, and with the dull drum beats or
tambourine rattles that greet you whenever you tap options or
commands. It all adds to the story experience, and that's a tricky
thing to pull off.
(Evoking
a certain ambiance is really a strong point for Cubus, in fact. The
same was true for their previous apps The Sinister Fairground and
Heavy Metal Thunder.)
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We
have a strategic, diceless combat system, here. Each round, you get
to choose three actions - attacking, defending or resting. If you
attack when your opponent is defending, he'll take very little
damage. If your opponent attacks while you're resting, he'll gut you
pretty quickly. If you try to attack-attack-attack, you'll get tired
out pretty quickly. Anticipating your opponents' strategies is a
little tricky, but you get the hang of it soon enough. There isn't an
excessive amount of combat, either. My first playthrough, I only
fought two opponents.
Any
real criticisms? Considering the app by itself, no. It's a solid
contender against the other gamebooks-as-apps that are out there just
now. Comparing this app version of Necklace of Skulls to the
dead-tree gamebook of yesteryear, however, I see the app is a bit
less flexible in allowing you to choose or create your character
(maybe I want the AGILITY and SPELLS skills, dammit!). This
is, I suspect, a choice on the part of Cubus to prune out any
rules-lawyering, and to present this app as a streamlined,
'one-tap-does-all' experience. And that's no bad thing - frankly, if
interactive fiction is to make any headway as a mainstream medium, I
think that's the right way to go.
So,
another strong entry from Cubus Games. Now I start counting the weeks and days until their next app, the sci-fi Sol Invictus...
(Post by Paul Gresty)
