Companions of Xanth

Companions of Xanth is another production of Legend Entertainment studio specializing in creating games based on literature. In this case, the artists decided to create an electronic version of the sixteenth installment of the popular Xanth series by Piers Anthony under the title Demons don't sleep. For the first time the studio has introduced mouse support in its adventure. This makes it easy to perform actions by selecting commands from the menu on the left side of the screen. In the course of the game, we jump over static locations, observing the world from a first person perspective. All the items collected go to a permanently visible inventory panel, so we have easy access to them.

The plot presents itself very surrealistically and we have to deal with humorous accents at every step. Dug is a young boy who spends most of his time in front of a computer. Once he receives an intriguing game entitled Com-Pendium of Xanth. After activating it, it moves to the other side of the screen, where it meets its companion in the form of a snake woman named Nada. It turns out that his colleague Kim found herself in a similar situation. Two demons, E(A/R)th and X(A/N)th, are responsible for all the confusion and decided to settle the bet by challenging two people. The fate of the whole Xanth world, divided into four lands according to the element that dominates them: fire, water, earth or air, depends on who wins. Therefore, we take up the glove and try to regain freedom.

The creators have prepared for players a number of puzzles with different levels of difficulty. The biggest challenge is often to get used to the absurd rules of the virtual world. For example, at some point we have to convince the handcuffs to release the Nada. In a similar way we can try to talk to all the items in the equipment, including the instructions for the game, which will cause it to start fluttering with cards and barking. NPCs who have been met during the game also present themselves curiously.

The Companions of Xanth game has a two-dimensional graphic design in a palette of 256 colors. This title was released on diskettes as well as CDs. In the latter case, there were voices under more than thirty characters in the game. While traveling the world of Xanth we are accompanied by a music track in MIDI format, but, what is interesting, in order to listen to it we have to turn off the remaining sounds.

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Last updated on August 14, 2015