News ID: 174
Date: 2012-07-22
Source: Sierra Chest
The year is 1992. Doralice Prunelier inherited a large mansion at the European Atlantic coast, the Manor de la Prunelier, and explores it for the first time. She finds a shipwreck with an Egyptian sarcophagus stored in it. At that moment an unknown man enters the scene, questioning what she is doing there and threatening to destroy her. As the man walks away and Doralice follows him, she loses conciousness and finds herself waking up, locked up in the ship in the year 1840. The ship belongs to an slave trader, Jarlath, who owns a plantage on a Carribean island. However there is more to Jarlath than meets the eye. He is from the year 2092 and has, through manipulation of time, hidden a treasure within the sarcophagus. By marrying the daughter of a rich plantage owner in 1840, he inherited his wealth and uses the slave trade as a disguise to transport the sarcophagus to Europe, where he let it run on the clips near the manor de la pruneliere, the land he owns. What was not included in Jarlath's plan however was that his wife, Velvet, would fall in love with one of the slaves and give him a child. This child would become the greatgreat grandfather of Doralice, who inherited the mansion in 1992. Jarlath wants to set things straight and kill his wife's extra marrital child to prevent Doralice will ever be born. Now Doralice has to go back in time and save her own ancestors.
Lost in Time, created by Coktel Vision, was initially released in two parts. Later it was re-released as one game in various language releases and with speech. As with most Coktel Vision games, Lost in Time uses live actors on artificial backgrounds. Strangely, this game uses very different backgrounds and animation on different game locations. On the ship it uses 3-D backgrounds and first-person camera movement. At the manor de la Pruneliere pictures of actual locations are used with FMV scenes. And on the Island of St. Cristobald the backgrounds are still and cartoony looking with live actors dominating the scenes. This mix of graphics and filming techniques make Lost in Time are rather awkward game to play. Also the puzzles, which are focused on the use and combining of inventory items, often don't make sense, making this game very hard to complete without the use of a walkthrough. Overall it is a strange complicated game which some players may find brilliant and others may find mediocer.
