John Saul, the popular horror writer upon whose serial novel The Blackstone Chronicles is based, has stated that the idea for the story originated as an adventure game. Centered around the shell of a former asylum, both the books and the game deal with the ghosts of said sanitarium.
| Platforms: | PC |
| Publisher: | Red Orb Entertainment |
| Developer: | Legend Entertainment Company |
| Genres: | Adventure / Point and Click |
| Release Date: | 1998 |
| Game Modes: | Singleplayer |
The Blackstone Chronicles Pc Game: Free Programs, Utilities and Apps. IGN is the Blackstone Chronicles (PC) resource with reviews, wikis, videos, trailers, screenshots, cheats, walkthroughs, previews, news and release dates. Blackstone Chronicles is also a beautiful game using fabulously rendered 2D scenes to depict the asylum. John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles overview. Type: Adventure ESRB Rating: Teen Release Date: Developer: Legend Entertainment, Red Orb Entertainment Publisher: Mindscape. Based on a series of books from John Saul, Black Chronicles takes place in the Blackstone Asylum that is about to be re-opened as a museum. 'An adventure in terror.' That's the tag line for John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles, and for once there's truth in advertising.Yes, indeed, the game is a modern-day.
Blackstone Chronicles, for all intents and purposes, is a modern ghost story. The tale is set in the Blackstone Asylum in Blackstone, New Hampshire. Long abandoned, it has recently been turned into a museum on the history of mental health practices — but its spirits don’t rest so easily. The late head of the asylum, Malcolm Metcalf, was a sadist who relished the tortuous treatments he inflicted on his patients. Malcolm’s son, Oliver, was also a victim of his father’s sadism; he’s now on the road to recovery from a mental breakdown he had five years ago. He has a wife and young son and is getting on with his life when the opening of the asylum/ museum stirs up some old ghosts.
The spirit of Malcolm Metcalf lures Oliver’s son, Josh, to the asylum and hides him away. Oliver (that’s you, of course) must make his way through the asylum to confront his own demons and save his son. These characters are never seen; they’re only heard. The only person you see in the game is Josh, who is represented by still photos strung together in one of the game’s cheesier sequences. The voices of the ghosts speak to you as you enter rooms or click on different objects. All the locations are rendered in admirable and evocative detail, with point-and-click navigation linking them together.
Gameplay is a series of barrier puzzles solved by combining and using objects, and driven by dialog with the ghosts. None of the puzzles will stop experienced gamers for long; this relative ease of play might disappoint veterans expecting a more challenging adventure game experience from Legend. The only time things ever get really tricky are in the few timed puzzles, which are easy enough to restart that they hardly slow you down.
System Requirements: Pentium 90 MHz, 16 MB RAM, Win95
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| John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | |
| Publisher(s) | Mindscape |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows |
| Release | |
| Genre(s) | Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles: An Adventure in Terror is a 1998 computer adventure game developed by Legend Entertainment and Red Orb Entertainment, and published by Mindscape.
The game is based on serial novels that were written by John Saul, titled Blackstone Chronicles.
A sequel to the novels, the game takes place several years after the sixth book, and continues the story of Oliver Metcalf, his family, and the town of Blackstone.
Plot[edit]
The game starts with Oliver arriving at the Blackstone Asylum, which has been purchased and is being turned into a Museum of Psychiatric History. That doesn't sit well with Malcolm Metcalf, Oliver's father and last superintendent of the Asylum, who died some forty years before. All of the activity involved in transforming the Asylum has awakened its residents. For reasons not yet known to Oliver or the player, his father's spirit has taken his son, Joshua, and hidden him somewhere in the Asylum, apparently to coerce Oliver there.
Exploring the mansion, Oliver encounters several spirits of patients who are bound to the asylum by their possessions, including a teenage girl with hysterical pregnancy, a schizophrenic who believes she's English royalty, and a depressed woman who was treated with steam baths and hydrotherapy. Oliver discovers that his father psychologically tortured to suicide or allowed several of his patients to be killed under the guise of accidents during treatment. This is counterpointed by the sterile and rose-tinted explanations from the museum equipment for the same procedures or implements (lancets are described as an attempt to bring the bodies humours into balance, where the spirit of a patient with Alzheimer's disease declares they were used liberally so patients could not defend themselves). Disheartened by the failure of traditional medicine, Oliver's father gradually turned to more and more extreme methods, including totally dismembering and vivisecting an 8-year-old boy to cure his illness. Eventually his treatments turned to outright torture, as a punishment of undesirable behaviors to eventually remove them.
Over the course of the game, Oliver collects several personal items that influence him, causing him to nearly kill himself in several psychiatric methods (ECT, self-injecting neuro-toxins, locking himself in a steam box). His father Malcolm implies this is caused by the inherent evil contained within the items, although its heavily implied that Oliver developed these traps himself while under Malcolm's control, through a long, complicated sequence of post-hypnotic suggestions.
Oliver's father eventually reveals his plan. While Oliver has been trapped in the asylum and continued to refuse Malcolm's demands that Oliver take vengeance on Malcolm's enemies, Malcolm returned Joshua home, and instructs him to murder his mother with a straight razor, as a punishment of Oliver for his disobedience to his father and to make Joshua a monster with Malcolm's similar outlook. With the help of the spirits trapped in the asylum, Oliver destroys the artifacts of his father throughout the asylum, banishing his fathers spirit.
Development[edit]
Production of Blackstone Chronicles' audiovisuals was outsourced to Presto Studios, creators of the Journeyman Project series.[1]
Reception[edit]
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In Computer Gaming World, Allen Greenberg summarized, 'Blackstone Chronicles is definitely a unique piece of work with a gripping storyline, wonderful graphics, and a most talented cast. It should not be missed.'[2] John Altman of Computer Games Strategy Plus considered the game 'recommendable, if not rave-worthy.' He found the graphics middling, and felt that the game's heavy reliance on written text bogged down the experience. However, he wrote that Blackstone Chronicles has 'good atmosphere, well-integrated puzzles, and the occasional truly memorable scene.'[5]
Reviewing the game for PC Gamer US, T. Liam McDonald called it 'the kind of narrative-driven, atmospheric adventure game we see too little of in these days of soulless Myst clones.' While he disliked its visuals and lack of character interaction, he felt that Blackstone Chronicles offered 'enough to recommend it to many adventure-starved gamers.'[3]
Blackstone Game
Blackstone Chronicles was a finalist for Computer Gaming World's 1998 'Best Adventure' award, which ultimately went to Grim Fandango and Sanitarium (tie).[8] In 2011, Adventure Gamers named Blackstone Chronicles the 43rd-best adventure game ever released.[9]
References[edit]
- ^https://web.archive.org/web/20000818122215/http://www.ga-source.com/interviews/beneath.shtml
- ^ abGreenberg, Allen (February 1, 1999). 'The Blackstone Chronicles'. Computer Gaming World. Archived from the original on August 16, 2000.
- ^ abMcDonald, T. Liam (February 1999). 'Blackstone Chronicles'. PC Gamer US. Archived from the original on March 3, 2000.
- ^Nash, Jonathan. 'Ultimate'. PC Gamer UK (69). Archived from the original on March 19, 2002.
- ^ abAltman, John (November 25, 1998). 'The Blackstone Chronicles'. Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on November 6, 2004.
- ^Staff (March 1999). 'John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles'. Next Generation (51): 91.
- ^Houghton, Gordon (April 19, 1999). 'John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles Review'. PC Gaming World. Archived from the original on October 9, 1999.
- ^Staff (April 1999). 'Computer Gaming World's 1999 Premier Awards;CGW Presents the Best Games of 1998'. Computer Gaming World (177): 90, 93, 96–105.
- ^AG Staff (December 30, 2011). 'Top 100 All-Time Adventure Games'. Adventure Gamers. Archived from the original on June 4, 2012.
The Blackstone Chronicles Game
External links[edit]
- John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles: An Adventure in Terror at MobyGames
- John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles on IMDb