The Abbey of Crime (<1Mb)
For all of you graphical and text adventurers out there, this is a remake of a Spanish adventure game, in fact an all-time favourite with many Spaniards. It uses the 3D graphics of the original in a modern framework, and quite closely follows the plot of the quite famous novel The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Fortunately for all of us, the game includes an English translation version of the game amongst other available languages. It would help, though isn’t essential, to have read the novel. Ok, honest, I’m not trying to literarize you all (I can try I suppose!) Not pushing you, - but it is a very well written novel! There's always your local library!
Anyway, to the game. It’s a very original adventure and a great tribute to it’s original maker Paco Menéndez, where it was called L’ Abadía Del Crimen and released by OperaSoft. It was considered one of the very best computer games in its time. We can now thankfully all enjoy this game on Modern PCs. The graphics were made by Juan Delcán.
It plays on a 3D isometric screen, with added colors from the original. In fact if you wish, you can play it in the original Amstrad Color or even the Amstrad Monochrome colors it first came out in. It was meticulously disassembled and code rewritten as necessary for it to play in Windows. Such is it’s following in Spain. So it plays and looks pixel for pixel exactly as it did on the Amstrad!
It does look and play like old DOS games, which gives it great character; but does restrict the available text information, as when originally produced computers simply didn’t have the available memory space we have today.
Before you do anything, as soon as the game starts to run, right click with the mouse on the game window to access the options menu, and select ‘Ingl’ so it plays in English!
And so to the plot and the story. Of course murder has been committed (well it turns out to be a series of murders!) and it’s up to you and your fellow follower monk to solve the crime and bring the perpetrator to justice. But the Abbey has some tricks up its sleeve to make things just that bit more difficult for you! For one thing there’s a tight time deadline to solve the mystery, then there’s day to day events to find out about and cope with, including not forgetting your duties as monks in attending Holy Mass, and have dinner with the other monks and Abbot and attending prayer meetings. You can get other monks and the Abbot, and anyone else you may meet to talk to you, though you will have to decide if their information is valuable or of any use or not. You have a limited inventory of items to find and collect, but each item you find and pick up has a significant use at some point in the game. The other monks of the medieval Benedictine abbey move around according to a programmed AI built into the game, dedicated to their various tasks, which you can watch in amazement.
Then there are the Librarians Berengarius and Malachi - of whom there is no way to circumvent their surveillance - the herbalist, willing Severino, the venerable Jorge, doom and blind, even ‘the pain in the backside’ Abbot, who is always controlling your actions, interrupting your investigations and failing methods and calling you a novice master, and making the bar descend dangerously rapidly in the Obsequium ‘health’ bar (the times he will to put to you that 'you have disobeyed my orders ... "). Impossible not to be moved to the point of nervous palpitation, an achievement that not many games get, when you have to leave your cell at night to access the library, with the abbot hot on your heels, or impulses that get Adso to snatch the key to the Malachi secret passage. And all seasoned with music for a game of those times sublime: the notes that accompanied the writing of the manuscript of the game's introduction, the catchy tune, the monastic writer who allows us to see the path of the library and especially the Ave Maria Handel playing in the Masses.
You are initially instructed to follow the Abbot, which you may find tricky at first. Your disciple monk mostly follows you around automatically, unless you move him separately. It will take you quite a while to familiarize yourself with the Abbey’s layout, so I’ve included a map from the novel which may help! One thing you will need to do is follow other monks at night to see what they are up to. Exploration and choosing what to do are as essential a part of the game as solving any minor puzzles you may encounter along the way.
If you make any major transgressions (eg disobey an important order by the Abbot), or get caught walking about at night, you will find yourself immediately expelled from the abbey and have to restart the game. A series of minor transgressions, such as not following ‘minor’ orders or being late for prayers once too often, can have the same effect! There are also many secret passages and the labyrinth to find and explore. The Abbey has extensive grounds, and it’s a large abbey to find your way around, the library constitutes a large maze, as does the labyrinth. And running out of the time allowed, sends you straight back to the beginning of the game. Oops!
You as Fray Williams and your compatriot Adso, have been told to find the culprit! Helping the Abbot and solving the crime will take you many journeys and forays into the Abbey and its grounds!
Controls are quite straightforward. ‘L/R’ arrow keys rotate your monk, and ‘Up’ arrow key moves William (you) forwards and the ‘Down’ arrow key moves your follower monk Adso, independently if you wish . ‘Alt+Enter’ - Full screen (or mouse double click), ‘Z’ key to select,’ Esc’/gamepad 3, ‘Enter’/gamepad 4 - Menu, ‘Alt+X’ - Quit, ‘Del’ - Pause, ‘Up’/’A’/gamepad 1 - Move William, ‘Down’/’Z’/gamepad 2 - Move Adso, Left/’K ‘- Turn left, Right/’L’ - Turn right’. ‘Space’/gamepad 4 - Drop item, ‘Y’/gamepad 5 - Answer yes, ‘N’/gamepad 6 - Answer no.
It plays windowed or full-screen (full-screen mode colors ‘success’ might depend on your graphics card) in XP, Vista or Win 7, directly from the extracted folder.
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I’ll repeat the ‘right-click’ on the game window’ to get to the Options and select ‘Ingl’ for English with the mouse left-click, or you might otherwise be stuck and not know what to do as it starts by default in Spanish!
The crime is timeless, but you have just 7 (game) days to solve this in-depth and breathtaking graphical with text adventure!
It is a great adventure which may have you well-puzzled at times, and even though it has (deliberately) old-fashioned graphics, it does play extremely well, and is an enjoyable challenge to try to beat, to say the least!
Don’t be put off by the small download size, it’s amazing how much they could program and include graphically in assembly language programming!
You almost certainly won’t solve it in an hour or two and it may take much longer (or very much longer!) to complete! Splendid!
You can find a Partial Walkthrough http://computeremuzone.com/abadia/abadeng.php#solucion which also includes links to some useful maps of the Abbey, The Library and the Secret Labyrinth. It also has alternate download links for the game.
Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsdwKmQ6FS4
Video walkthroughs (in Spanish!) are also available on YouTube. (L’ Abadía Del Crimen, Dia 1 - 7)
Download Remake http://www.abadiadelcrimen.com/ ----- click on ‘Descarga’ to go to the download page, then click on the 32 bit version to download the game. -----
La Abadía del Crimen 2 the sequel, is an ongoing project to watch out for in the future.
