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Elemental
 Released around a year ago the last game from Dragon Works was Passage: Path of Betrayal, a good old-fashioned point and click adventure. This latest game, Elemental, is something completely different. Once again it's all point and click but it's a puzzle strategy game of the sort that you can just pop into your computer to relax and fritter away the time. It's played on a grid that is packed with teasing obstacles, so be prepared for a bit of mild head scratching or hair pulling.
There's a little story woven in to set the scene. The evil Dr. Mechanico is intent on taking over the world and he has an army of robots behind him. You, Natryla, must stop him by collecting up the magic gemstone on each level which, in turn, means activating the three 'touchstones' to release the gem.
As well weaving your way around the obstacles to find the essential items and contending with charging robots that mow you down and send you back to 'go', there's also laser-bots to catch the unwary and snow-bots that fling deadly snowballs in all directions.
Natryla, however, is not defenceless, she's armed with the powers of Earth, Fire, Air and Water. All she has to do is seek out and gobble up the mushrooms to fuel up her arsenal of spells. Calling on the power Earth she can demolish stonewalls that block her path, or gouge a hole in the ground big enough to swallow charging robots. A Water spell will drench the laser robots and deactivate them, or flood a dried riverbed and turn it into a trap. A Fire spell will achieve the same result when used on a frozen river and, if located judiciously, Fire will easily melt any flying snowball. The Air spell also comes in handy, as the power of Air can move things around.
 Elementals is divided into three different environments, the Forest, the Arctic and the Desert and there are 10 levels for each ... 30 in all. There is a tutorial that introduces the game and demonstrates the basics to get you started. The very first level is fairly easy but it picks up pretty quickly so you can't rest for too long. As new elements are added a small hint window alerts you so that you know how you might use them.
The game screen is flanked by navigation buttons and gauges to watch your progress on the left and the spell menu on the right. At any time you can access the help function and the game automatically keeps track of your progress by checking off games on the main menu as you complete them. However, it's not completely linear J you can jump around and play any game you want!
If you like this sort of thing then Elemental has some variations on the theme. You have to look ahead and plot your course carefully to avoid the hazards and at the same time be careful that you don't eliminate an important object . As I always enjoy this kind of challenge I had some fun. My only complaint is that I couldn't easily tell which way ice mirrors would deflect laser beams. But this could be just me, and a little experimentation solved the problem anyway.
You can download a demo of Elementals from Dragon Works. Why not do so and check it out?
Copyright © Rosemary Young 2002.
All rights reserved.
System Requirements:
Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP or newer version, Pentium 266mhz or faster. 32MB RAM.
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