Review for Crowalt: Traces of The Lost Colony
Madcraft Studios’ Crowalt: Traces of the Lost Colony uses beautiful graphics, an intuitive point-and-click interface, fluid animation, lovely unobtrusive music, and a humorous story to introduce its players to one of the most mysterious American legends; The Lost Colony of Roanoke Virginia, where a colony of settlers has mysteriously vanished. Despite the enticing story, the game has several twitchy minigames that slow the journey to a lackluster finale.
This adventure uses a third-person perspective, comic-like graphics, and a palette of bright colors that make it easy to be drawn into the story. It’s divided into four main locations: the town of Crowalt, the docks, the tribal camp, and Turtle Rock. My favorite location is the tribal camp because of the bright, vivacious color palette and upbeat music.
Using an intuitively simple point-and-click interface where left-clicking activates a context sensitive menu, you guide the protagonist Hugh Radcliff as he attempts to determine the fate of the lost colony. He's animated well, walking with a smooth gait. When idle, his head moves up and down in an excitable manner, and this can be quite distracting.
Hugh’s adventure is replete with humor that will bring smiles to its audience. As soon as he arrives in Crowalt on a dark, stormy night, Hugh finds the inn protected by a warning sign that forbids him from entering with wet shoes. Displaying the same rebellious attitude common to many adventure game protagonists, you'll help him find a humorous solution to handling this warning and enter anyway. A hotspot indicator helps point out interactive items that can help solve such puzzles. Once inside, Hugh encounters many homogeneously shaped whimsically drawn characters with whom he can speak by left-clicking on them and selecting the speech balloon. Topics are selected via the chat menu. Riley, the innkeeper, decides Hugh can pay her in the morning. After an interactive minigame in the form of a nightmare in which Hugh must clean gravestones to uncover his own grave, he discovers he can’t pay his bill in the morning. As such he’ll have to bartend for Riley, in the first of several minigames, to pay the debt.
Hugh’s goal, while bartending, is to conserve the limited beer supply by using each customer’s words to figure out how to water down their drinks. If a customer says something like: “Give me something to forget the pain,” you’ll need to use more beer and less water. Left-click on the beer to use some of the 70 Kegs supply. Left-click on the water to add as much water as you can. When the glass is full, click and drag it to the bar at the top of the screen. If you run out of beer, you’ll need to start over.
Not everything goes as planned during bartending, causing Riley to angrily decide not to pay him. Hugh will have to find alternative ways to pay his debt, for example through a dangerous wager in which he has to endure Five Finger Fillet. The lower-than-average dexterity in my fingers made this timed minigame very frustrating, but I eventually triumphed. Press the indicated arrow key before the meter empties to avoid getting stabbed by the dagger. If you get stabbed more than five times in five rounds, you lose and will have to try again. The game can be played as many times as necessary to win.
Later on, Hugh meets Albert, who proposes a Quid Pro Quo. If Hugh retrieves something from The Common Treasury, Albert will reveal what he knows about The Lost Colony. Most of the tasks Hugh performs can be solved easily if one pays attention to Hugh’s conversations and his inner monologue. He summarizes clues in a journal that is accessible via an icon in the upper-right corner of the screen.
Inventory may be accessed via the bag at the upper-left of the screen. A few of the puzzles aren’t as well clued as the others. For example, at one point in the game you have to press symbols in a specific order, but there seem to be no clues from the story regarding what that order should be. Despite that, I was able to progress quickly. After retrieving the scroll, Hugh will have to run errands for the townspeople, such as bringing liquor to the tribal camp. During these escapades, Hugh makes some friends among the tribe: notably Tagwa for whom Hugh has to sew a vest to progress in the story. Sewing the vest is a minigame with no instructions. To complete this you’ll have to move the mouse between the holes in an X pattern from the bottom of the screen to the top. If you’re doing it correctly the game will let you know.
Some puzzles are harder than others. The hardest are lock-picking puzzles; for instance when Hugh needs to pick a lock to gain entrance to a warehouse at the docks. To progress you’ll have to pass another timed minigame with no instructions. The goal is to match the pattern shown by clicking on the pattern choices on the bottom of the screen. When your choice is moved above the preceding pattern, you’ve chosen correctly. If you make four correct choices before the timer empties, the lock will open. I succeeded through sheer luck. Hugh will need to complete a second lock-picking puzzle near the end of the game; that one is notoriously harder than the warehouse lock puzzle because even more patterns are involved.
The minigames slowed things way down and required too much dexterity for me to enjoy them, though they could appeal to other players. The ending felt disappointingly abrupt. Overall I enjoyed the story, graphics, music, and puzzles that weren't minigames during my eight hours spent playing Crowalt: Traces of the Lost Colony.
