Le Dernier Serment

This French game is designed to run on an Amstrad CPC emulator. It comes with pixel art.

This was tough; I often struggle with old-school games, and playing in French wasn't helping! I did find 2 out of 5 endings, and feel satisfied with that.

You are asked by an oracle in your village to explore an old chapel and find a monk named Hermes. You must solve a series of puzzles to figure out how to save your land!

The biggest puzzles revolve around creating potions. I never found amanita mushrooms, one of the ingredients, so I likely missed the best ending. But I managed to brew two of the others.

I enjoy games that have two worlds, and this game does that. The pixel art is interesting. The only thing that was grating was the slow fake 'loading' the emulator does every screen. Yes, I remember playing games in the 90s where the PC would chug and slowly load each screen. It was nostalgic the first 50 times. But as the game goes on it certainly loses its charm!

Apparently there's a way to win the game in one move, which is interesting!

Le Dernier Serment nous fait jouer une aventure retro où il nous faudra trouver une solution pour sauver notre village dont le libre arbitre disparaît peut à peu.

Obtenir la bonne fin est assez difficile, mais certaines mécaniques sont assez sympas, comme la confection de potion. Garder le PDF du manuel ouvert à coté est un vrai plus.

Un jeu à essayer, même s'il nécessite d'utiliser un émulateur.

Le Dernier Serment is an old school parser adventure made for the Amstrad CDC, in which you must rid your village of a nasty curse: losing their freewill, leading them to their death. The adventure includes a nice range of puzzles, and an external manual/feelies pdf. There are no hints, help, or walkthrough included. There are also 5 endings listed (though I am not sure whether one of them is possible?).

I definitely had a few difficulties going through some of the puzzles, but it’s probably more due to me not being good at (French) parsers or just not reading the manual correctly, or whether the puzzles are actually obtuse (which, for an old-school parser, wouldn’t be too surprising). But figuring it out (and seeing the environment change before your eyes) felt so darn good! The puzzles are pretty varied, going from interacting with your environment to timing puzzles. I struggled with one so much because it dealt with opposites and transposition.

The game is also GORGEOUS! Every screen includes pixel art, one part showing what is in front of you (directions between rooms can change) ~ each being distinct from the others, and another showing yourself (and your state). The font used might not always be legible, but its design is so atmospheric.

A beautiful neat game!