Download Heaven's Dawn

One of the most obscure point & click adventure games ever made, Heaven's Dawn is an average game created by Taiwanese developer Art 9 Entertainment, translated into English and marketed in Australia by Manaccom.

The game is yet another "clueless human gets sucked into a strange alternate reality" kind of game, except it is not as interesting as Accolade's Altered Destiny. You play a tourist who found himself listening to an old beggar who tells about God's curse on mankind. God, it seems, is now angry at humans for "creating sins," and has ordered 5 deities to curse mankind. The next thing you know is you get sucked into this strange fantasyland, beggar's necklace in hand. Naturally, you must find out where everyone has gone, save the world from God's wrath, and find your way home. All in a day's work.

The gameplay will be familiar to every fan of LucasArts/Sierra adventures. Run your mouse cursor around the screen, clicking on interesting-looking objects to read their descriptions or pick them up. Right-click brings up the inventory screen, where you can click on objects to use in the gameworld. One nuisance about the game is that it offers no description of inventory items, although fortunately most items are not entirely alien, and most puzzles are easy. Speaking of puzzles, most are variants of the traditional find-key-to-unlock-door puzzle, and although there is a few neat magical artifacts you can use, you will not be stumped for long in this game, except for some cases of annoying pixel-hunting.

Despite pleasant VGA graphics and a good feel of "traditional" point & click adventure, Heaven's Dawn has nothing to lift it up from mediocrity. The writing and plot are banal, and the puzzles are uninteresting. The game does not have the sense of humor of Monkey Island, the wacky but clever puzzles of Discworld, or intriguing plot twists of Dragonsphere to keep you interested.

If you are a fan of adventure games, you will probably play this one anyway despite what I say ;) But don't expect to find another forgotten classic. Heaven's Dawn is not so bad it deserves to remain obscure, but it is also not good enough to promote. Too bad.

Review By HOTUD