Abandoned Places: A Time for Heroes

Abandoned Places: A Time for Heroes
Developer(s)ArtGame
Publisher(s)International Computer Entertainment
Designer(s)Francis Staengler
István Fábián
Artist(s)Jeno Klimits
Composer(s)George Dragon
Lajos Suvak
Platform(s)Amiga, MS-DOS
Release
Genre(s)Role-playing, dungeon crawl
Mode(s)Single-player

Abandoned Places: A Time for Heroes is a 1992 Hungarian dungeon crawler role-playing video game developed by ArtGame and published by International Computer Entertainment for Amiga and DOS platforms. A sequel, Abandoned Places 2, was released in 1993 for Amiga.

Plot and gameplay

The player's party fighting a monster in a cave

The narrative sees a band of four heroes from the land of Kalynthia, to save their homeland from the clutches of the evil arch mage Bronagh.

During dungeon crawls the game switches to a 3D view and plays similar to Dungeon Master.

Development

Abandoned Places was developed by the founders of Hungarian video game development company ArtGame, István Fábián and Ferenc Staengler, along with musician György Dragon, who joined them in 1989. The game was inspired by Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Dungeon Master tabletop role-playing games. Starting in spring 1990 the company pitched the game to several publishers, including Electronic Arts, but they were finalizing the publishing deal for a similar game, Raven Software's Black Crypt just a week before, so they rejected the game. The game was finished and tested by January 1992, a month before its release.[1] The developers received little to no compensation for their work on the game, they were even banned from the game's Hungarian launch event.[2]

Reception

Amiga Power gave the Amiga version of Abandoned Places an overall score of 80%, praising the size of the game world, and expressed that Abandoned Places' leverage over other similar RPGs is that it has extensive above-ground locations in addition to its subterranean dungeons, furthermore, stating that "what you do above ground is every bit as important as your endeavours below." Amiga Power also praises Abandoned Places' level of difficulty, but criticises its "poor" graphics, calling its animations "lackluster" and almost '8-bit' looking in combat, expressing that "when so much effort has been put into every other aspect of something as huge as Abandoned Places, it seems a shame that it's so completely outgunned in such a very important area."[7]

References

  1. ^ "Previews: Abandoned Places". Amiga Format. No. 30. Future Publishing. January 1992. p. 71.
  2. ^ Beregi, Tamás (November 2010). "A számítógépes játékok aranykora" [The Golden Age of Computer Games]. In Judit Borus (ed.). Pixelhősök: A számítógépes játékok első ötven éve [Pixel Heroes: The First Fifty Years of Computer Games] (in Hungarian). Vince Kiadó. p. 300. ISBN 978-963-303-023-3.
  3. ^ Evans, Darren (April 1992). "Gamer - Abandoned Places". Amiga Computing. No. 47. Europress Publications. pp. 12–13.
  4. ^ Cotter-Cairns, Ashley (March 1992). "Abandoned Places: Why do you Hate Mondays?". Amiga Mania. MC Publications Ltd. pp. 46–48.
  5. ^ Patterson, Mark (March 1992). "Screen Scene: Abandoned Places". CU Amiga. No. 25. EMAP. p. 73.
  6. ^ Simmons, Jason (March 1992). "Abandoned Places". Amiga Action. No. 30. Europress Interactive. pp. 68–69.
  7. ^ a b Foster, Karl (March 1992). "Abandoned Places Review". Amiga Power. No. 11. Future Publishing. pp. 38–39.
  8. ^ Webb, Trenton (February 1992). "Screenplay: Abandoned Places". Amiga Format. No. 31. Future Publishing. pp. 92–93.
  9. ^ Nettelbeck, Joachim (December 1991). "Abandoned Places". Amiga Joker. Joker Verlag. p. 12.