Developed by DreamForge Entertainment in the middle nineties, Chronomaster is the science fiction tale of a retired designer. Rene Korda once designed very popular pocket universes…little worlds custom created for the individual who purchased them. Some of these pocket universes, however, have shut down and no one knows why. Rene is hired by the local government to research and fix the issue.
Chronomaster is a point and click adventure game that is set inside these miniature world. Rene has to travel to each of them and track down their unique world keys, all of which are guarded by some unusual puzzles.
Each world that he visits will reflect its owner, allowing for many different interesting looks to the places you are exploring. The adventures in each world are made even more exciting by computer generated cut scenes of reasonably good quality. The game also features an all star cast of voices for its heroes. Ron Perlman is Rene Korda and Lolita Davidovich narrates the part of his assistant, Jester. Brent Spiner plays the part of Rene Korda’s former student, Milo, who joins the fray in the middle of the game. Apart from the great voices, the sound effects and background music are pretty good and seem to blend in fairly well.
Aside from the cast of characters, Chronomaster is a standard point and click adventure.
It is made somewhat more complicated by the mass amount of extras involved in the game. There are many tasks you will complete or attempt in hopes of some great result, only to learn that it had no bearing at all on solving the game. Additionally, many of the puzzles have more than one solution, which tends to get confusing in the middle of them. There are quite a few puzzles that are based on interaction with other two dimensional characters you encounter throughout the game and there is also a maze sequence. There are numerous outcomes to the game, mostly directed by the nature of your character. For example, are you more likely to act courteously, cowardly or aggressively? Once your character’s nature is established based on the choices you make in many of the previously mentioned conversations, the story turns to match.
Overall, Chronomaster is imaginatively detailed puzzle game and does an excellent job of following the 1996 novel of the same title. It is a nice blend of fantasy and science fiction and while it is confusing at times, it is primarily an entertaining play for the adventure gamer.
