I bought Forever Worlds on the basis that I'd enjoyed some other Adventure Company games, but it transpires that the same publisher with a different programming team does not always result in happiness for the unfortunate games player. At least the intro is quite well done, as are the in-game graphics, although in general there's a lot of stuff which looks as though it might be interesting or useful but which can't be handled, which is a discouraging factor.

My first minor gripe was that there's no option to adjust the sound and video settings, but I was prepared to live with that - not a "deal breaker". First location - on a river bank, next to a boat - can't see anything else and can't do anything. It transpires that the reason that I can't see much is that the game displays each new location in "zoomed-in" mode, and that to see what's around I have to press the "zoom-out" key - this has to be done *every* *time* a direction arrow is selected to access another location!

OK, OK, calm down, don't panic, you can live with that, it's only one key, just takes a second (but *every* *time* ?!? ...). Now, let's see, what's around here. What?! My eyes, my eyes! They're frozen in place! I can only look straight ahead! Doooom!! Here's me expecting that moving the mouse around will allow me to look around the area - but noooo - not in this game. On reading the (very brief) manual I discover that to look around I have to move the mouse with the left mouse button pressed *continuously*. Aaarghh!!

OK, OK, calm down, don't panic (I'm panicking; this program must have been written by crazy people!). No, No, shh, you might wreck several mice during the course of the game and contract disjointed finger disorder, but maybe that's a price worth paying to experience this amazing journey? OK (pant) I'm calm now (pant, pant) I'll be fine (pant).

So I find a village with several huts, only one of which can be entered and which contains only one object not rooted in place. On exeunting - and enduring a stra-a-ange interlude - I continue on the path out of the village - only to find that I'm back in the village again! It transpires that after moving forward you can then be facing backward, so moving forward again puts you back where you started! This isn't a consistent anachronism, but happens often enough to be pret-ty annoying at that.

Anyway, found a mysterious mystical gateway and walked through it (as you do). Various mysterious and mystical events ensued, leaving me with a puzzle to solve. After much puzzling and no solving I decided to save the game and come back to it later. Right-click to bring up the Main Menu ... nothing ... right-click (with more authority) ... nothing ... right-click - click - click ... Escape ... press every key on the keyboard ...... nothing. It seems that another particular feature of this game is that puzzle locations can only be left by solving the puzzle. I can move around within the location but there are no exits and the only other actions available are to operate the puzzle. Nor can I even quit the game, as that option is also on the Main Menu, which isn't accessible! I had to Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up the Task Manager and kill the program to get out of it!

Goodbye cruel Forever Worlds! Click! BANG!! Thud!

Ok, the truth is that there have been at least 2 years since I've played the game, but I do my best to forget it! I can recall though surrealistic places , pixel hunting, and strange puzzles not making sense. Hope this helps just a little bit..


EDIT: I just realised I rated this game with 3 stars. This is a mistake! I didn't like it, I wouldn't rate it with more than 2 stars. It's a strange place with weird puzzles. Definetely not recommended.

Enter the unknown...
When world famous paleontologist, Doc Maitland, finds the powerful, mythic tree he's been searching for all his life, he has no idea of the enormous extent of its power. When he vanishes, his daughter Nancy and her partner, Doctor Jack Lanser, archaeological detective, pick up the Doc's trail in the deep jungle of the Amazon headwaters. Caught by a spell of a different nature, Jack must find his own way through a chain of non-parallel dimensions and figure out how to prevent it all from taking place before it even happens. In danger of being lost for an eternity, Jack has to find his way through a strange and amazing universe to save himself and Doc Maitland from the Forever Worlds.

Forever Worlds is a first person perspective adventure game transporting the player into a series of surreal and immersive worlds where magic and fantasy merge with subtle humor and beautiful images. The game is mouse driven with a point-and-click interface. Intelligent cursors indicate what actions are to be performed. Navigation uses hi-res/hi-polygon pre-rendered 3D compressed movies. The player collects items for an inventory and uses such items to solve the problems and puzzles that are fully integrated into the truly unique and fantastical story.