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By the time you get to the last dungeon, you'll already know how to play the resting mini-game, and the paths are shorter and more straightforward as well. The first dungeon - which may well not be possible to even run straight through from its beginning to the end of one of its paths without losing health - will start harming you rapidly, and once that's started you must escape outside and rest somewhere to get it back, which means intense stamina farming. On the other hand, when you're attacked by enemies or traps they do hardly any health damage. In modern gaming language, the word that best describes this gameplay mechanic is probably 'farming.' You have to constantly be alert for enemy attacks, and you must Escape & Evade them until you can go to sleep again. And it gets even worse, because in most areas you cannot simply go to sleep and wait. Whenever you go to sleep, you cannot do anything but watch as the Stamina candle slowly refills, and you'll probably waste a few seconds each time trying to make sure it's totally topped off (it doesn't automatically stop resting you until you choose).

When that happens, Health starts running out at the same pace, so by just exploring one or two rooms in a castle you can go from a half-height candle and feeling pretty good, to eating all your apples and barely making it to an exit in time to recharge stamina. Stamina depletes at a rapid pace, and that pace appears to quickens as the candle gets lower. Bullet Proof Software's port of the Psygnosis original drops some mouse-driven interface bloat in favor of hard-coded buttons, and where the labeled commands originally where, the SNES game now features two burning candles - labeled stamina and health. So, why don't savestates really seem to make the game 'easier' outside of avoiding unwinnable situations? This is not only an adventure game where you can unknowingly get into an unwinnable game or run out of items, but it is one where you must explore everything while respecting very strict time limits you're basically juggling three sharp daggers at once. There are some attempts to make the last dungeons more exciting and difficult, but they don't really matter. The last half of the game is notably easier, as you're mainly just running about, murdering NPCs for trinkets and collecting items. The most powerful enemy hit sponges in the game can both be killed off early on with items the first dungeon is arguably the most difficult, and all the while beginning players will still be getting to grips with the interface. It has a very uneven stage progression, with the most difficult areas all at the start - it doesn't get more interesting or better later on. However, the game is also strangely compelling, at least until you really get into the rut with the running and sleeping cycle. Running and sleeping make up easily 20% of the game, if not more, and thinking about running and sleeping will be your obsession all the time. Heavy savestate abuse, in my case, helped blunt the edge of the constant threat of getting into unwinnable situations. Gameplay mostly involves drawing maps (which I didn't do because this map exists and is easier to follow than this guide, which is still useful in conjunction with the map for hints and specific requirements), running away from enemies, trying to scroll the inventory quickly, not getting trapped against friendly NPCs, and running, and sleeping. There's also semi-sidescrolling castles played from a fixed fake 3D perspective, where you watch your player from the perspective of a fly on one of the walls. You play in two perspectives: Dungeon Hack / Phantasy Star / 3D Monster Maze-style first person, with smooth animation sliding a new direction into focus when you make a 45 degree turn - this is apparently the core 'gameplay' idea and these areas represent 90%+ of the game. Hide and go sleep: Obitus, Adventures of the Pantsless Manįirst off: This is a bad game. Sounds like a good name for a development company!Īnyhow, short-as-I-can-manage review time, because it's a really unusual game with a lot to explain: