Robinson's Requiem (Amiga) - A Playguide and Review - by LemonAmiga.com
75Robinson's Requiem is a 1st person 3D survival game, developed by French company Silmarils, and published on the Amiga in 1994. The game brought the Colossal Cave formula into the 1990's, with rendered animals and landscapes. But is this too deep for it's own good?
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Production Notes:
Captured: 2019? (not captured), 2021? (corrupted), 6-7 January 2023
Narrated: 15th June 2023
Final Render: 25th August 2023 (V3b)
Robinson's is a game which had been on the list to cover since perhaps 2017. I read all the info I could find, and some PC walkthru guides, which shared plenty of hint and tips. Eventually at some point I dived into the game, and recorded it. But the recording did not appear on the hard drive after I finished my play. Disheartened, I waited a couple more years, but eventually tried again. This time, the recording was corrupt, and I couldn't play it back or edit it. Dismayed, I waited a few more years to come back to it.
When Series 13 of the playguides came around, based on 3D and Survival games, this seemed like the obvious choice. Luckily, I had saved the game up at key points during my previous run(s), so I could skip to the next save to speed up the recording time, similar to how Deuteros was recorded. Getting back to lists of medical facts and solutions in case my character was bitten or poisoned by something, and pouring over various solutions, was quite daunting. I had to pause the recording sometimes to look up some controls or what I was meant to be doing. I didn't get as far as I did on my second failed recording, because this time I did not find the flair gun, or take out the T-Rex in the swamp. This time I couldn't remember how to find the gun, and instead I went into the cave in the desert, and explored the lava fields beyond.
Narration on this one was strange in that each sentence seemed to contain clicks. For the rest of the reviews, I used a tool to remove those, but in this one, doing this made the voice sound too muffled. So I had to manually remove them - perhaps hundreds. I'd also upgraded (bought) the latest version of my editor, and this caused some issues with speeded up footage, which I only just learned why today (20 Oct), which caused even more clicks!
This one contains a fair few cheat sheets, where people can look up the solution to a problem, like how to fish, and where all the Robinson's are. I had planned to put in chunks from the manual, but had to scale back those hopes due to how long it was taking to edit.
Danscore:
Survival has become a hidden staple of modern games, from Far Cry, to Red Dead Redemption and The Forest. Skinning animals and collecting fur, finding and combining herbs, and fighting wild animals in a 3D open world landscape is now expected, but back in 1994 this idea was very new. Silmarils really pushed the frontier with the CD-Rom PC version, but without the audio and voice narration, the Amiga offering seems lacking somehow. The game barely ever helps the player by giving out missions, and simply expects survivors to explore and slowly figure it out. Almost everything in the game has to be done in a certain order, so even though it seems the player can do anything, in fact they can't, and some essentials like the Eagle are found hidden in places seemingly inaccessible on the map. Sometimes copy protection can appear in the wrong places and seem annoying. Sometimes the player can collect too many tree branches and be fixed to the spot, without a way to drop them! The medicine cabinet is overwhelming, and stacks up like a medical degree paper, while the vast landscapes are 99% empty, with rocky crags and pits of death, high bridges and lava to instantly kill you. The player gets a knife and sticks, but they can't fashion even a simple spear, a club, or a walking stick.The vast open landscapes are lonely, especially as the player is required to murder every living creature along the way. There is plenty to like about this, but also lots to be put off by, and so I can only give this 6.5 out of 10. It's a good technical demo, but there isn't enough here to keep the player coming back.