#A PERSONAL NIGHTMARE GAME CODE#

Maybe I'm biased by nostalgia - one of my favourite games of all time was Gateway, which bears many similarities to Personal Nightmare. NPCs go about their business, some of the locations are really creepy (like when you first find the vampire's coffin) and the puzzles are intelligent but not too difficult. Its graphics may not be that good, it may not have sound, but it's immersive. Overall, I'd give Personal Nightmare a 4. Probably a fluke, since every time after that, it worked. You need DOSBox to run the game, and the first time I tried, it crashed. The lack of sound doesn't really affect gameplay, and it can even be taken as an invite to load up Winamp and play whatever you think would enhance the atmosphere.

More specifically, the laughter of the Devil as he comes out of the dead preacher. The only sound I could hear in the game was in the intro. it's not much but it improves the atmosphere and gives you the feeling of exploring a living world. There's even a bit of animation: you'll see people walking along the sidewalk, a taxi coming to the local pub to pick up someone who's had one too many. Still, that only impacts the graphic window, which is still detailed enough to clearly show the objects in the area. I know many adventure games have point-and-click interfaces, but remember this game was made in 1989! Speaking of which, here's an interesting bit of trivia: Personal Nightmare was released on the 31st of December 1989.ĭue to its age, you'll only find 16 colors in the game. For example, you can click on a verb (Open) and an object (cabinet), and the words appear at the bottom. There is some good news for the lazier among you: like Gateway, the mouse is supported and does wonders to speed up gameplay. The center of the screen shows what the player is currently looking at (the room you're in), on the left is a compass which shows which way you can go, and on the right is a list of verbs that the game understands. The interface is very similar to that of Frederik Pohl's Gateway: you tell the game what you want to do by typing sentences in. I rather enjoyed this, as a time constraint really pushes the player to do less random exploring and focus on the task from the get-go. I'm not really sure why, but you must complete the game before the next sermon at the village church - which is in 4 days!Įvery few minutes, the game will tell you that another hour has passed.

The theme of the adventure is to find and expose the evil people by getting evidence against them and having them arrested There's not only 'normal' sinners, like murderers and adulterers, but you'll have to dispose of a witch, a vampire, a hell-hound and finally the Devil himself. By playing the game, you discover that evil forces have taken over the people of the village. My guess is that the guy being struck by lightning is the man in question. You have to find out what's going on and what happened to your father.

A strange letter from him made you decide to return to your village, only to find out your father is nowhere to be found, and everyone is hostile and strange. Your father is the pastor of your village. After doing some research online, I found the plot behind Personal Nightmare: However it doesn't explain what the player has to do. The intro only shows a man being hit by lightning in a church, then transforming him into the devil.

#A PERSONAL NIGHTMARE GAME CODE#

Personal Nightmare shares common video scripting code with other AGOS games and due to this, it was included in the AGOS engine.įor more information on how ScummVM uses game data files, see the user documentation.Like the name implies, Personal Nightmare is a horror game. Personal Nightmare was the first game to make use of Horror Soft's new AGOS engine, although the engine used does not resemble any other version of AGOS.Īccording to Alan Cox, The Personal Nightmare engine was considered too complicated and was scrapped, later games would use AberMUD5 variants. This adventure-RPG follows the son of a pastor who has to find out who is behind the disappearance of his father and the possession of the townsfolk by demons. Personal Nightmare is the first game in the Elvira series.

A personal nightmare game