By Kurt Kalata

Terry Pratchett is one of Britain's most popular, and most valued, humor writers. Since he began his Discworld series in 1983, he's written nearly forty novels set in the same universe, providing an expansive library that outstrips many other fantasy authors many times over. Discworld is about a world, appropriately shaped like a disc, which is held on the back of two elephants, who in turn are standing on the back of a giant turtle that flies through the cosmos. The Disc is a fairly typical fantasy universe, filled with wizards and barbarians and the like, although all of the common tropes are skewed and lampooned relentlessly, and there are numerous parodies, of both other fantasy fiction and of real life figures.. At the heart of the Disc is the city of Ahnk-Morpork, a den of filth and villainy that most would rather steer clear of. It's a city so rank that it contains legalized Theif and Assassin guilds (because regulated crime is easier to maintain than unregulated crime, their logic goes). It's a funny, richly detailed world, and there are dozens of recurring characters. Despite its popularity, Discworld's transitions into other media have been limited. There have been a few comic books, an unfortunate brief foray into animation, and a handful of live action made-for-TV films released in the early 21st century. There are, however, four adventure games based in the universe, many of which take elements from various books but are largely original. The first game, a text adventure, is a pretty faithful adaptation of the first book, but the other three are graphic adventures.

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The Colour of Magic - Commodore 64 / Spectrum / Amstrad CPC (1986)

European Cover

The Colour of Magic

The Colour of Magic (C64)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy proved to be one of Infocom's most successful games, so why not go down the same route and adapt Discworld into a text adventure? The Color of Magic, based on the very first book in the series, puts you in the shoes of hapless wizard Rincewind, as he becomes a guide for the naive tourist Twoflower. The game is divided into four acts and follows the book closely, with the first two acts taking place in the city of Ahnk-Morpork, the third in the upside-down dragon city of Wyrmburg, and the fourth in the country of Krull, which is perched on the edge of the disc. There are occasional graphical portrayals of certain locations, although they're bland and ultimately pointless. The game is slightly bizarre in that it refers to the player in the third person as "Rincewind" rather than in the second person, as typical of other text adventures. It also tried to add to the flavor by requiring that you navigate via Discworld direction - instead of North, South, East or West, you need to use Hubward, Rimward, Turnwise or Widdershins, respectively. This doesn't really work though, since it's more confusing than anything. Indeed, the whole of the text parser is pathetic. In order to converse to someone, you have to first type "TALK TO ___" and then "SAY ____", unnecessarily dividing a single command up into two. Good luck trying to get it to understand what you're talking about anyway. At one point you need to feed milk to a cat. You'd think "GIVE MILK TO CAT" would work, but the correct solution is simply "DROP MILK". Certain events occur on a timer, and it's possible to miss them, rendering the game unwinnable. While the text captures Pratchett's prose well (and seems almost to lift from it in spots), these issues immensely hamper the enjoyment and doesn't provide anything new or interesting like the Hitchhiker's game did, so you're better off just reading the book instead. Another adaptation of The Colour of Magic was released in 2006 for mobile phones, although it's an isometric action game rather than an adventure game.

The Colour of Magic (C64) The Colour of Magic (C64)

Discworld - IBM PC / Playstation / Saturn (1995)

American Cover

Discworld

Discworld

In 1992, a company called HorrorSoft (later AdventureSoft) attempted to buy the licenses to create a fully graphical adventure game based on the license. They didn't succeed and instead made Simon the Sorcerer, which carried some of the same themes as the Discworld universe, but differentiated itself enough to stand on its own. A few years later, in 1995, two developers named Teeny Weeny Games and Perfect 10 Productions, were more successful, and release the first point n' click Discworld game. This game, simply titled "Discworld" (initially subtitled "The Trouble With Dragons", although this was dropped from the final release) is adapted from the 1989 book Guards, Guards! It involves a mysterious (and not terribly bright) order of cloaked men who summon a dragon into Ankh-Morpork, in an ill-conceived plan to install their own king and rule the city. In the book, it was up to Captain Samuel Vimes and the City Watch to put things right, but the game does things differently. The members at Unseen Univerity, home of some of the brightest wizards on the Disc (and a few of the stupidest), need to make some kind of effort to prove that they are not entirely useless. And so, the Arch-Chancellor elects Rincewind for the job, mostly since no would miss him if he screwed up. Eincewind is one of the most popular Discworld protagonists, which makes him well suited to be the star. Beyond the initial set up and a couple of the situations, the game really doesn't follow the book that closely, although reading it makes a fine accompaniment. Even if you're not familiar with the novels, the game serves as a fine introduction to the Discworld universe. Every time some bit of background lore pops up - for example, as to why the librarian is an orangutan - a nature show-style narrator pops up and explaisn it, complete with diagrams. Although Pratchett's involvement in the game was minimal, must of the silliness is maintained, whether it be jabs at Rincewind's incompetence (and his girlish wizard robe) or long, silly, roundabout conversations that don't really go anyway. Beyond Rincewind, there are a number of familiar faces, including the Lord Vetinari the Patrician, the not-quite benevolent ruler of Ahnk-Morpork; Nanny Ogg, a kindly witch with a thing for custard; and the Dibbler, a slimy salesman who peddles some of the most questionable items known to mankind. When getting involved in precarious situations, Rincewind will be stalked by Death, a rather pleasant chap who SPEAKS DRAMATICALLY IN ALL CAPS, although since there's no way to die or get stuck, his taunts are largely for amusement. There are a number of other characters that pop up who aren't explicitly named (including the members of City Watch) but will ring some bells with fans of the books. There are bits of fourth wall silliness, like the utterings of Rincewind when you keep poking him with the cursor (he'll eventually get agitated and take it away for a few seconds, before reluctantly relinquishing it) or he'll peer into the screen and yell a wake-up call if you let the game idle for too long. For deviously funny as it all is, Discworld is hard. VERY hard. A good chunk of the difficulty comes from the rather freeform nature of each chapter, wherein Rincewind is sent to scour for half a dozen random objects or so. There's rarely any clue of where these objects actually are, and sometimes they aren't even apparent when you do find them. Plus, Ahnk-Morpork is not a small city, with new locations constantly opening up, and each location usually consisting of a handful of expansive screens. Things get even more confusing when you enter "L-Space", an alternate dimension (sort of) set approximately twelve hours in the past. That's a LOT of ground you have to cover, especially since obtaining one item usually requires obtaining other item or solving another puzzle somewhere else. Furthermore, the game never really leaves the city, and things change in each location after each act. It's fun to go around and see what's different and what new conversations you have. It's not so fun to go through the same screens tediously combing them over for stuff when you're stumped. As such, the lack of direction really makes things harder than they need to be. And then the puzzles themsevles are also quite nasty. For instance, in the second chapter, you need to hunt down members of the evil order and steal an item from them. You find one of them in a street, wearing a belt. You see him munching on some snacks. In the alley next to hit, there's a toilet, and earlier in the game, you saw someone munching on a bag of prunes. At this point, the solution should be obvious enough, but no, the designers went several steps further. Before you give the man the prunes, you need to steal some of Nanny Ogg's "love custard", grab an octopus, and shove both down the toilet. Then, once you've fed the prunes to your mark and he heads to the john, he'll be unspeakable ravaged, and the belt is yours. That's all somewhat amusing, but it's also way too complicated. Then there are the kind of puzzles that you just sort of stumble into. In the third act, your goal to find several "heroic" objects, one of which is a mustache. During the course of the game, there's a running gag that whenever anyone gets knocked over and stunned, they proclaim "Did anyone get the number of that donkey cart?" It's not too funny, except later, when you come across a donkey and his donkey cart. They seem innocuous enough, but the license plate on the cart is smudged. You need to go through an elaborate series of hoops to clean off the plate, get the number, intentionally injure someone, and when they recite that annoying joke, you'll find that the donkey in question has been arrested. At this point, you're supposed to steal the scissors from the barber, snip the donkey's tail, and...there's your mustache! It's true that an element of British humor is its unending amusement with the terrors of bureacracy (Douglas Adams helped design an Infocom text adventure by that very name, it's very good), and the inane puzzles that adventure games, especially this one, put you through for the most random objects, fits in nicely with that. It's all well and good in concept, but when you ask a player to go through all of these ridiculous steps in a game that's supposed to tickle their funny bone, not send them wandering around in confusion for several hours - well, that's an amusing bit of tragedy, really. One could surmise that the overwhelming puzzles were the works of amateurs - Lucasarts games could be devious but never quite to this level - but the rest of the game proves otherwise. The painted background artwork is consistently fantastic, although they get old when you trudge through the same streets dozens of times. The character designs and spritework are excellent too, capturing the silliness of the universe quite well. The music is grating and repetitive, but the voice work in the CD version is absolute top notch. Rincewind's voice is provided by Eric Idle, and he can make the most mundane lines seem absolutely hilarious. Many of the secondary characters' voices are supplied by stand up comedian Rob Brydon, Jon Pertwee (one of the Doctor Whos), and Tony Robinson (Baldric from Blackadder). The only problem comes with the overtly repetitive voice clips. After spending hours trying to use items together ineffectively or interacting with useless stuff, Rincewind's endless utterings of "That doesn't work!" and "Nope! I can't shift it!" grow nightmarishly tiresome. The interface is devoid of icons, as a single click on the left mouse button will command Rincewind to walk, a double click will tell him to interact, and the right mouse button will command him to look. Conversations are held much like Sam and Max Hit the Road, with options to ask a question, tell a joke, make a comment, or ask about specific items or concepts. Rincewind's inventory is extremely limited, but he's followed around by his faithful Luggage, a sentient (although not terribly bright) multi-legged chest with infinite storage space. It's quite a clever way to integrate a story element into traditional adventure game design. All all, it's hard to hate this game - it's quite clever when it's not provoking frustration, and it's a damn fine rendition of Pratchett's books. But it really needs a lot more direction - and less convoluted puzzles - to make it really work, leaving this one for the experts only. Beyond the original PC release, Discworld was also released for the Saturn and Playstation. They replicate the VGA graphics of the computer version perfectly, and while the point n' click interface is a bit fiddly with the controller, the Playstation version is one of the very few games to support the mouse periphreal. The loading times aren't quite as fast as the PC versions, though, although they're quite playable. Still, the Tinsel engine is supported by SCUMMVM, so the DOS version is easy to play on a modern PC.

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Discworld II: Mortality Bytes / Missing Presumed..? - IBM PC / Playstation / Saturn (1995)

American Cover

European Cover

Discworld II

This sequel finds the Discworld in an unfortunate situation. Death has apparently taken a vacation, leaving the residents of Discworld unable to properly die. Immortality might seem enticing, but here, it doesn't quite work as expected - instead of simply living forever, the dead shamble onward as either zombies or ghosts, and none of them are too happy about it. And so, once again, Rincewind is tasked with saving the day. The basic concept is (very) loosely based on the novels The Reaper Man and Mort, with various subquests consisting of a mishmash of a variety of books, including Lords and Ladies, Moving Pictures, and Pyramids. The first Discworld game looked damn good, but this one kicks things up several notches. The graphics have been upgraded to SVGA, using cartoon-style cel graphics for all of the characters. While the art style has changed a bit from the last game - Rincewind isn't quite as cutesy, in particular - it still looks completely fantastic, and stands only second to The Curse of Monkey Island in regards to high quality 2D visuals. The animation isn't quite as solid, although it does fix some niggling issues found in other games. The only major problem with Curse was the way Guybrush's sprite scaled, often looking quite jagged when viewed from certain perspectives. Discworld II sidesteps that by using about half a dozen versions of Rincewind's animations that change depending on his location, rather than using sprite scaling, for an effect that's not exactly smooth but looks a bit more pleasant. Eric Idle returns as Rincewind, and while the rest of the cast is totally new, they still do an outstanding job. This sequel openly acknowledges the complaints about the previous games and fixes nearly all of them. The interface feels less fussy, and there are dozens upon dozens of comments when you misuse items, this avoiding the issue of repetitive quotes. The world of Discworld feels much more fleshed out here too. The first game set roughly 80% of the game in Ahnk-Morpork, while this one spreads out its wings much more, letting you wandering through the deserts of Djelibeybi (the equivalent of Egypt), XXXX (a strange take on Australia), and Holy Wood (that one is more than obvious.) Each act still involves hunting down a series of seemingly pointless items - quests which Rincewind will address the screen and complain about - but it's actually a lot more focused. The game world isn't nearly as expansive as its predecessor, and since double clicking on an exit allows for a quick exit, it makes traveling between areas much faster too. Although there's still a fair share of bizarre puzzles, there are plenty of clues in the dialogue to help figure out the solution, and it's not too hard to put together the ones that aren't. One of the first objects you need to find is a stench. Well, one of the men in the Shades has such a foul smell that it's taken on a physical form. Right next to him is a store selling a genie bottle, but even that can't quite hold it. Just toss in a shoe to absorb the odor, and you're set. Similarly, another task is to find some mouse blood. It's easy enough to find a mouse, and since Rincewind's far from a murderer, you need to resort to more roundabout plans. Just walk around a bit and you'll find a miserable vampire - all you need to do is find some way to steal his fanged dentures, and you're set. All in all, they're pretty well designed, and not nearly as complicated nor as infuriating as the first game. The opening credits feature a jazzy nighclub-esque song and dance number sung by Eric Idle (and performed by a jaunting skeleton) entitled "That's Death!", whose jocular and, quite frankly, morbid tones might elicit memories of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Live" from The Life of Brian. That's far from the only Monty Python reference, of course, with one scene elaborating on the difference between "parroting" and "parodying". The writing is still high quality and the story takes a notably silly turn around the second act, where you need to take a number of steps to help Death star in a "flickie", the Discworld version of a movie. The film that they make up...well, it's certainly about as stupidly far from The Seventh Seal as one can possibly get. The final areas feature Death's abode, complete with a snotty butler, a rather effeminate bedroom, and a particularly bratty (and inexplicable) human granddaughter. The only major problem with Discworld II stems from its improvements - namely, the game's not nearly as huge, nor as long. It does feel rather rushed by the ending, though. For awhile, it seems like Rincewind is going to take over Death's position, which could've made for a whole interesting chapter, but instead it just tosses in an epilogue for something almost totally unrelated, and so the ending seems a bit disappointing. That doesn't overshadow the rest of the game though, which is easily everything the original game should have been, and absolutely essential adventure gaming. In its original European release, Discworld II is subtitled "Missing Presumed...?", a play on the phrase "missing, presumed dead". Psygnosis must've felt this wouldn't work in North America, so it was changed to "Mortality Bytes!" In addition to the PC release, it was also released for the Playstation and Saturn, although the Saturn version was only available in Europe. The console versions suffer a downgrade to VGA level graphics and added load times, plus they only come on a single CD, where the PC version comes on two. This means the cinemas are more compressed, another mark against it. The Playstation version supports the mouse once again, but since SCUMMVM supports the PC version there's really no need to muck with the console ports.

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Discworld Noir - IBM PC / Playstation (1999)

European Cover

Discworld Noir

Discworld Noir

The third (and final) Discworld graphic adventure is a marked departure from the first two. While those were at least partially based on elements of the novels, Discworld Noir is a completely original work, one which reimagines the city of Ahnk-Morpork as something out of a Raymond Chandler novel. The protagonist is a new character named Lewton, the city's first private investigator and former member of the City Watch. He's the typical noir hero - clad in stylish hat and overcoat, he's a down-on-his-luck cynic with a penchant for eloquently depressing metaphors. The game begins as he's chased through the streets, and eventually murdered by an unseen assailant. He's not quite dead, obviously, as he begins relating the events that lead to his apparent demise. It started a week ago in his office, as he's approached by a luxurious dame named Carlotta who asks him to investigate a murder. Things can never be that simple, though, as Lewton finds himself entangled in a wider webs of killings, conspiracies, and mysterious artifacts. It's much darker and far less wackier than the other Discworld games, that's for sure. The visuals, along with the story, have received a drastic overhaul. While the game is still 2D, all of the graphics are CGI. Lewton is the only polygonal model rendered in real time, as all of the secondary characters are pre-rendered, an effect that actually doesn't look as bad as it sounds. The models aren't great, but since they're usually so shadowed in darkness it's hard to complain much, and perfectly recognized hard boiled stylings overcome any technical definicies. The backgrounds come off much better though, and there are tons of cinematics that blend together with the action and flesh out the city. The atmosphere is heightened with an appropriately jazzy 30s era soundtrack, complete with liberal trumpet and piano. Everytime you find an important clue or a new location, a few chords strike dramatically, an effect which maintains in intensity even in the final moments of the game. It's true that Discworld Noir has some commonalities with the Tex Murphy series, as both are brooding detective mysteries with a bit of comedy bent. But Discworld Noir effortlessly weaves in elements from Pratchett's books which give it a life of its own. Despite styling itself after 1930s America, the medieval stylings of Ahnk-Morpork really don't feel all that out of place. The city actually feels a bit more interesting now that it doesn't rely so much on high fantasy tropes, and the traditional noir stories are a lot more interesting when you're dealing with dim-witted trolls, obnoxious dwarves and sarcastic, piano playing vampires. Although most of the major characters were invented for this game (and never appeared in any of Pratchett's novels), there are a couple of familiar faces, including Captain Vimes and Nobby of the City Watch, as well as the talking Gaspode the Wonderdog, the quirky inventor Leonard da Quirm, and, of course, Death. Beyond the usual Discworld references, though, is an overt love for, obviously enough, film noir. The story of Lewton and his lost love Ilsa is taken directly from Casablanca. Al Khali the dwarf and Jasper Horst the hulking troll are direct parodies of Peter Lorre's Joel Cairo and Sydney Greenstreet's Kasper Gutman, respectively, from The Maltese Falcon. Some invidual lines are referenced or even quoted nearly verbatim. "Who was what girl?" Carlotta asks Lewten when referring Ilsa. "The one who gave you with such a high opinion of women? She must have been quite a gal." It's more or less what Lauren Bacall said to Humprey Bogart in To Have and Have Not. A lesser work might seem like a lazy rip-off, but in the context of Discworld and its strange inhabitants, it's a lovingly delicious parody. Plus, while the Discworld novels have featured numerous characters based on real life people or figures, Discworld Noir sticks in a video game parody with Laredo Cronk, an "unpwardly nubile tomb evacuator" and obvious riff on Lara Croft. Despite the change in setting and tone, this is still very much Discworld, as evidenced by the dialogue. The writing is as funny and snappy as ever, with Lewton holding his own as a main character against more well known folks like Rincewind. Despite his bad luck and generally poor situation, he's not nearly as incompetent, and he manages to make even the grittest dialogue genially amusing. His sarcastic monologues and commentary are nearly always colorful, in that grey kind of way. Try examining the bored warehouse guard. "It was the kind of look that could only be achived by someone whose job was so mind-numbingly tedious that their only pleasure came from being blistering unhelpful to everyone who came along." His interactions are just as droll. "Mr Lewton?" Carlotta inquires in his office. "If I'm not, I should fire the guy who painted my door." Lewton dryly responds. His one weak link, though, is his voice actor. Rob Brydon manages to pull off the lines with an appropriate amount of sarcastic gravity, but his attempt at an American accent just sounds a wee bit off. The rest of the acting is also inconsistent, but generally far more good than bad. The interface works much like the first two games, with some additions. In addition to the usual inventory, Lewton keeps tracks of various clues in his notebook. These clues are obviously used for interrogation, but they also function as useable "items". When used appropriately, they provoke Lewton to make some logical connection and gain more insight. Additionally, as the lunar symbolism (and cover artwork) suggests, Lewton gets turned into a werewolf about halfway through the game. Here, he can change into wolf form and gather various scents, which appear as colors amidst the grey backgrounds. You can use this colors to follow various trails, or match up identical colors in different situations to uncover their source. While using all of these clues requires a slightly different mode of thinking, the actual puzzles are, for the most part, much easier than the first two games. Indeed, the whole first act consists mostly of interrogating people and gathering clues, rather than actually solving much of anything. When you actually do get to uncovering mysteries, it's much less obtuse than it used to be, completely doing away with the usual multi-layered fetch quests. While moving around the city is quick and easy, the interrogation sequences are more complicated than they should be. There's an icon to introduce yourself, and several context sensitive topics that pop up as you converse. You can also talk about any of the items in your inventory, or about any of the clues in your notebook. Each of the topics are classified under the various cases you happen into, and uncovering new bits of data will scribble out old ones. Actually finding relevant things to inquire about requires flipping through several sheets of paper, which grow more useless as you progress through the game. Wouldn't it have been easier to just have a single list of topics like the Gabriel Knight games? This itself is a minor complaint. The story is remarkably compelling, full of all of the twists and turns as expected of a story like this, and the writing is top notch throughout. The only issues comes from the seams in its programming. The game was developed for Windows 95 and 98, but is pretty buggy. It doesn't even officially support Windows XP, much less Vista or Windows 7, although with some tweaking it will run, albeit with some glitchiness and random crashes. (It won't let you pick the "Resume Game" option from the main menu either - you have to start a New Game each time, skip through the intro, and load your game from there.) Perfect Entertainment went belly up shortly after Discworld Noir was published, leaving them unable to patch it properly. The company briefly reformed under the old Teeny Weeny Games label to port Discworld Noir to the Playstation. While the PC version runs in a 640x480 resolution, the console port shrinks it down to 320x240, much like the port of Discworld II. Lewton's character model was downgraded too, although visually it still looks pretty similar. Due to this version being released on a single CD rather than three like the PC release, both the sound and full motion videos are heavily compressed, and various animations and sounds are cut here and there. But the game still supports the Playstation mouse, and will run under Playstation emulators like ePSXe, so it might actually be easier to get working than the actual PC version. It's a shame that none of the versions were officially released in North America, since publisher GT Interactive had gone under, leaving it as a Europe only release.

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Comparison Screenshots

PC	Playstation

Like many licensed games, the rights for Discworld are in limbo, making it difficult for any re-relases. Hopefully something can be ironed out in the future, to make the first two graphic adventures more easily available, or make Discworld Noir run more readily on modern systems. Links L-Space The video game section of this Discworld fan site.

Discworld II