Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Remake (30.1Mb)
Here is the complete full, finally finished, graphical point and click version - in completely unexpurgated form, except for intended, -- (and not so subtle), ‘censored’ plaques over any part (literally!) that might offend young children. Not that it matters too much - with the fate of the world so totally and completely decided against us, in any case! But who knows, after all - we don’t want to upset little children with just minutes if not seconds left on the clock!
This excellent graphical point and click adventure is a PC remake (based of course on the film), with a high degree of interactivity and puzzles a plenty - with some of the puzzles being (HHGG - are you surprised?) very challenging, though not (we hope!) totally totally insolvable! If you don’t solve the puzzles in time, our Earth might turn out to be surprisingly disposable and soluble to boot!
Arthur Dent’s day starts off very badly, after a night out on the town. He is fighting off a by-pass road the State want to build that will mean demolishing his house and home, and a bulldozer has just arrived. But things quickly get from bad to very (!) - far far, worse when his friend Ford comes in to inform him the entire world will end in just 12 minutes time, for the construction of an inter galactic hyperspace super express highway! Oh Boy!
Talk about making a dent on his day’s hopes - and he’s going to need a towel, of all things, to (hopefully!) flag down that 'one' passing spaceship. Not to dry his eyes at the State wanting to knock down his house, after all . . . And Ford says ‘Don’t Panic!’
You’re already one up with Arthur Dent as the game has two difficulty levels. Not that easy is really easy! Play it at the second difficulty level and that inter galactic super-highway might be considered already built - - or not? . . . but that’s up to you! You’re chances of stopping it aren’t too good at the best of times! We hope you have some acquaintance with Vogon planning laws!
While many parts of the game stay absolutely true to the original plot, some scenes make variations, such as mixing up scenes or changing the interactions required. This does add a new flavor which makes the game fresh to play even for the most ardent fans. You mostly play as Arthur, but in addition get a short play as Ford.
The two difficulty levels (insane and totally insane!) give you a slightly easier/ more forgiving inventory management but instant death if you miss something vital on the ‘easier’ level and stricter inventory control and continuing on until you are well-stuck if you miss something important for the ‘Hitchhiker’ more difficult mode. Either have auto-saves, but the easier ‘normal’ option intelligently auto-saves before you die and allows you to recommence from there depending on progress made. You can make manual saves at any time using the ‘F5’ or ‘F7’ keys.
Puzzles vary from being eccentric, to being downright challenging. You have to find plenty of items, some of which are very well concealed. Being a HHGG remake, you can expect some puzzles to be to some extent unpredictable! Some puzzles are ingenious, most notably The ‘Babel fish’ puzzle. Events of course can be utterly unpredictable! There are a very large number of puzzles to solve and trial and error often plays a large part in solving these! There are also lots of various optional things you can do for amusement during the game. (You can find a list of some of these later on in the ‘text-game’ walkthrough page).
You get a symbol like the picture above when you click on anything you can interact with. Clicking the right arm performs an action such as pick up the item, and clicking the left arm examines the item. Once the item is in your inventory you can try to use it, search it, examine it or drop it etc. The ‘wooden crate’ symbol in the inventory (right click mouse to show inventory) will show you contents for anything you can click on. Some items such as the gown, and various packages, including your Aunt’s ‘Thing’ in the gown pocket can be used as containers to store items in. Click outside the inventory screens to return to the game.
Gameplay is often similar to the much older and sometimes similar text adventure (forum link HERE) but is much improved by having a point and click interface and graphics (unless you have a definite preference for text adventures!), plus having new puzzles. The text adventure also has the disadvantage of finishing only half-way through the story.
There are walkthrough’s to the Infocom text adventure that might/will assist progress for some/many parts of the point and click version where the puzzles are the same or similar! Other parts and later in the game you are on your own!
The graphics are deliberately very retro (but suffice!), and sometimes lack detail, but this can be expected given the huge exploration needed during the game. You may be able to use for instance the 2x graphics filter to improve graphics (or greater if you’ve a large/very large monitor) and there are extra graphics settings you can set for a faster PC. Music and sounds are great and the game runs on XP, Vista and Win 7.
If any of this (or all of this?) doesn’t make sense - it should do?, as it was written after drinking just one Pan-galactic Gargle Blaster (on reflection this might have been a huge mistake, given the Earth's different gravity and differing part of the space-time continuum, and you don't need to know how many passing spaceships I had to flag down to get the ingredients! Let me see now, I don't think it was 42, but it could well have been, given how many towels we have in our closet!) - with a written copy of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy immediately to hand. To prove this, the updated entry for the Earth reads ‘Mostly Harmless’. At least it did before my head and eyes started spinning and resulting in a worse hangover than Arthur after his night out. I'm still not sure exactly where or who I am! There we are I've spouted so much nonsense that I'm making (some ?) sense now . . . or am I?
There are many such ‘mostly harmless’ scenes in the game where you die a very instant death in Sprag (normal) mode! Play in Hitchhiker mode and you are left completely clueless (a fate very much worse than death, in fact far worse than even having to listen to some Vogon ‘poetry’!) But does any of HHGG make sense, and if it does (or not!) does it really matter (or not!) ? Anyway, it's a . . great adventure!
Do read the (essential!) Hitchhikers Guide (PDF readme file) in the game folder. And do avoid like the plague, more than one Pan-galactic Gargle Blaster or you might indeed have a worse hang-over than Arthur Dent, and who knows what consequences! If you’ve a copy of the HHGG novels, these will surely assist you - and don’t forget to take them with you, along with your towel, on your adventure!
Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtjsLDu3fgs
Download HERE
Partial walkthrough and info guide - from the ‘text-game’ HERE
[Download the older non-graphical ‘text-based’ game HERE]
