Game
09
Dungeon
Module C1
The Hidden Shrine of Tomoachan
(1980)
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by Harold Johnson and Jeff R. Leason |
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Able Assistance: |
Dave Cook and Lawrence Schick |
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Editor: |
Harold Johnson |
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Editing and Production: |
Dave Cook, Jeff R. Leason, Lawrence Schick |
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Illustrations: |
Erol Otus, Jeff Dee, Gregory K. Fleming, David S. LaForce, David C. Sutherland III |
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The Realm Review:
A perrennial favorite,
The Hidden Shrine draws on a decidedly Aztec nature so cleverly intermixed with
fantasy that a wholly believeable culture is revealed before the eyes of the
PCs. Unfortunately, circumstances are arranged to allow very little sight-seeing,
making the first half of the adventure rather frenetic. A great weekender for a
campaign or a nostalgic pick-up game.
Realm Rating: 4/5
...Download Game09 at the Magic
Mirror...
Collected reviews on
Game 09:
Game09 - Hidden
Shrine of Tomoachan (rating: 5.5)
Eep! This must
be the first in gaming history to have Iron Butterfly's 'In-a-gadda-da-vida' as
the opening soundtrack. I'm not sure if that was actually a good first
impression on the game. It's a bit too long for UA, as well. Didn't crash my
system, but bits and pieces of the tune chirped in occasionally.
Also, without
actually starting to play, the color for highlighted font is not the best
possible. The normal color is good, but the highlight is a bit too dark.
The story has
the party trapped inside a large temple, and their goal is to escape that
temple. The idea itself is not very thrilling, but in this design, a good use
of art hacks made it a lot more interesting. I usually don't look into the art
gallery before I've played the game at least a bit, so some of the surprises
were quite effective.
Combats were not
the main concern in the game. The always occurring damage events were. In fact,
if the player creates characters in the game, I doubt it is possible to even
finish the game, since those damage events eat away the hit points the 1st
level characters have very very quickly. I found no resting areas inside the
temple (which made perfect sense). No area view available, but it really didn't
matter, since there usually was only one direction to go, which was 'forward'.
I think I
finished it. There was no 'defined' ending I could see, but I got out of the
temple and was indirectly told that the game was over. So I -assume- I finished
it.
Harri Polsa
Review of game09 - The Hidden Shrine of
Tomoachan
Another excellent entry in the Realm
series.
This is a faithful adaptation of the
tournament module. The first level can be quite deadly - which is exactly how
it's supposed to be. The best way to get through this design is to save the
game, explore a little, and then return to your saved game once you know the
safest route forward. If you follow the safest route through the Shrine, you
will have a better chance of survival, but you will still want to go back and
explore what lies down all the side corridors.
The art and hacks are strongpoints of this
design, as they seem to be for all the Realm games I have played. The Shrine of
Tomoachan has a lot of art for a short design, because of the booklet of
drawings which came with the original pen & paper module.
The only bugs which I encountered were: a
graphics display problem when a big pic is followed by a sprite and a few
spelling mistakes.
PLOT:
8 ART: 9 HACKS: 8 BUGS: 9
OVERALL RATING: 8.5
I highly recommend this module for
everyone.
Nol
