What would you do if you found yourself in a quaint little village and you kept meeting ghosts? Would you panic, or start hunting them? Oh, and by the way, there appears to be no way out of the village. Pretty place. Nice people here, even some of the ghosts, but who are they, really?
Oh, also, everything is in black in white with some splashes of color, but you don’t seem to notice. Could that mean anything?
I’ve said it before and I’m happy to say it again: The Lost Crown is, flatly, one of the best adventure games ever released. It easily stands alongside the Gabriel Knight series. That it was released in a time of drought for adventures adds to its luster.
It’s like an interactive movie. It has puzzles and conundrums and things to find and to use, but mostly, it has a plot that advances with scenes and dialog and soul-chilling sound effects.
You will think you’re there.
But are you sure you know what time it is?
What’s Going On?
Nigel Danvers, our hero, breaks into his firms’ secret lab and gets caught but escapes, or so he thinks, to the extremely odd little East Anglia village of Saxton. There he intends to hide, but to pass the time he decides to hunt for a lost Anglo-Saxon treasure reputed to be buried somewhere in the area. Ah, but finding that treasure pits him against some extremely nasty ghosts who have been guarding it for centuries.
In the meantime he’ll make friends in town (or so he thinks) and he’ll meet quite a few more ghosts. He’ll spend plenty of time trying to solve their problems and release them from their earthly confines.
And, Nigel discovers that Saxton isn’t quite what the casual observer might expect. Saxton seems to be either close to, or part of, The Abyss, the realm of the dead, or of monsters, or the supernatural. Something unusual definitely dwells there in Saxton, amidst all those nice folk, and those nice folk are in on it. So, apparently, is Nigel’s boss at Hadden Industries. Mr. Hadden investigates the paranormal and he seems to know quite a bit about Saxton as well. He commands Nigel to hunt ghosts, an activity Nigel is only too eager to pursue.
The Lost Crown comes across as more a ghost story than a treasure hunt, and has some deliciously frightening scenes. I’ve played multiple times yet the nighttime cemetery scene still scares me. We get to explore Saxton’s museum at night. We get little scares in the cottage. However, not all the ghosts are scary, and they don’t all manifest at night. We meet two lovely, sweet ghosts out at the Ulcombe church, and solve a mystery for them that left me feeling quite virtuous. Although . . . I can’t help but wonder if the plague victims in the Ulcombe crypt might still be just an eensey bit contagious.
Oh, and what time is it? More to the point, what year is it? One of the most intriguing parts of the game is time shifting. Often we won’t realize until later that we’ve been in a different time period, but when we do understand, the mystery of the town deepens and makes the inhabitants more intriguing still.
A warning, however, to animal lovers: the game contains an extremely unpleasant scene involving abused cats about midway through. I found it to be unnecessarily disturbing. Although I am a cat lover, the scene would not keep me away from the game, but there it is.
Where, or What, is Saxton?
Yes, it’s a pretty little village, but it’s all in black and white! Boakes’ decision to put almost everything in greyscale really captured me. First, it fits with the concept that this all might be a dream. It’s unreal, yet convincing. Boakes’ use of photographs of existing locations draws us in to this possible new reality. Add those splashes of color that we see from nearly the first frame, and the intrigue deepens.
And it moves! Perhaps the most convincing aspect of the greyscale photographs used to build the game come in the particle effects added by Matt Clark. Moths lazily flap around lights at night. Midges swarm in the swamp. Dust motes swirl in the air inside the cottage. Fog shifts along the ground, clouds drift by overhead, birds fly and dandelions drift across the screen. All that subtle movement is enough to convince us that we’re looking at a real place full of life.
But Just Who are the Saxton Folk?
Madly diverse people live in Saxton. Some of them seem to live in different centuries. Most are modern, like Lucy Reubans, Nigel’s eventual sidekick. The variety and depth of the characterizations really stand out in this game. Even in the vaunted Gabriel Knight games, usually only the leads work as fleshed-out individuals, while supporting characters are generally quirky stereotypes who really just work as props for the game. In The Lost Crown, though, perhaps because we spend more time with them, characters have far greater depth, enabling many to stand out as real personalities, not just the leads. Nigel, fortunately, comes across as somebody we can cheer on, even though he has some obvious faults. Lucy and Nanny seem to be real individuals, as does the marvelous Mr. Russet, the Station Master, Bob Tawney, Prof. Oogle and Rhys. (Yet, what imagination can have conceived of Mr. Gruel, a character who speaks only through a doll?) The humanness of Saxton’s population pulls players even further into the story. They appear to be real people even if some are a bit odd, and we care about what happens to them.
Getting into the Game
Even with all The Lost Crown’s attractive qualities, actually playing the game is, obviously, the important thing. Boakes has paced the action quite well. Even when we’re not out wandering around Saxton and environs pursuing the main plot, we’re intrigued by the smaller mysteries inside Harbour Cottage. Unexpected things happen. Early in the game we have a ghostly visit from Prof. Hardacre, a character who should be fully alive at the time. What gives? We move from speculation to action as we uncover new areas—then find that we’ve shifted in time. Who, aside from action-addicted shooter fans, could stop playing?
The puzzles, mostly inventory based, aren’t terribly difficult, but they give us a nice jolt of satisfaction when we solve one. The inventory stretches across the bottom of the screen, and picking up an item is as simple as a click. When you have the correct item, it glows green. As is normal in adventures, we need to discover and perform certain actions in order to trigger an advance into the next area and the next time frame and these can become tedious. Fortunately Boakes limits the game area when we need to find a trigger, so the task never becomes hopeless.
Fans of Boakes’ games will recognize Nigel, whom we first met in the original Darkfall game. Nigel looks a whole lot like Mr. Boakes himself, a choice I like a lot. Yes, let’s have a real person as our avatar, especially as he’s throwing himself into his games so completely! Polly White gets a very brief mention here if you look quickly. The Reubans name isn’t new either.
Voice acting is fine, although the little band of actors attempts to stretch too much at times. I adored Matt Clark as the Station Master but disliked his Prof. Hardacre. Emma Harry does a nice job as Lucy, but really soars as Nancy, the little London refugee. Boakes takes on perhaps too many characters, but his Mr. Russett shines. As Nigel he has an oddly choppy cadence, but it comes across as quite individual. Using a non-native English speaker as the detective does not work at all. It appears to be a cast of friends, so some irregularities are to be expected. Most importantly, the voices contribute to the individuality of the characters.
However, Nigel’s slow, gliding movement definitely slows the game. I’d speculate that his walking pace adds at least an hour to the playing time. At first it’s fine. We have plenty to see. As the game progresses, however, some sort of short-cut movement would have helped. I understand why it isn’t there; pacing through all these areas adds realism. Boakes does take pity on us sometimes, as when he brings Nigel back from a nighttime excursion by simply planting him automatically back in Saxton. I imagine that Nigel will be speedier in the later games. Rarely, something in the gameplay goes wrong. I found a fearful glitch when I was thrown into an earlier scene, but with the sound of buzzing flies still playing from the original scene. Fortunately I was able to revert to a recently saved game. However, that happened only once in a late replay. On my first several playthroughs the game ran perfectly.
Grade: A-Plus!
The Lost Crown gives you your money’s worth and then some. I’d guess that it takes a good thirty hours to complete, and that’s mostly in real gameplay, like the Gabriel Knight games.
The imagination, the inspired craftsmanship, the intriguing plot and the unusual graphics make The Lost Crown an instant classic. It will pull you in and absorb you for hours. It will make you believe you’re there, somewhere, in that strange little place called Saxton.
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