[Note: Since publishing this article, the title has been changed to Chronicles of Mystery: The Scorpio Ritual.]

Earlier this year, Polish developer City Interactive published their first serious adventure game with Art of Murder: FBI Confidential. But while the title's graphics were quite impressive, its gameplay, story and characters left something to be desired. At the Games Convention, we were able to take a closer look at Testament of Sin, a new point-and-click adventure which will hit the shelves at the end of the year.

In the new game, a famous professor of archeology has gone missing from the university of Paris. The whereabouts of Oliver Leroux are unknown, and even the police are unable to locate him. This causes his niece Sylvie to investigate his disappearance on her own, eventually discovering that her uncle had been tracking a dark secret connected to the Order of Malta that dated back over 400 years. Knowing that she'll tumble headlong into danger, she is determined to discover the ancient secret and free her uncle from the clutches of the occult forces.

Unlike Art of Murder, Testament of Sin won't use the Wintermute engine, but will be based on the Virtools engine, which was previously utilized in Microïds' Syberia. The developers of City Interactive enhanced and adjusted it to their needs, focusing on improving the light and shadow effects. The end result is quite a sight to behold. The playable level on Malta is based on photos of original locations, which have been implemented with a lot of attention to detail. Pieces of cloth sway softly in the wind, smoke rises from chimneys, and a fountain continuously splashes. To add to this, the animations of the characters and their shadows already make quite a good impression. In addition to the authentic walking animations, gestures and facial expressions also have their time to shine, especially during dialogs. All of this makes the game look quite realistic despite the fact that the number of background characters is quite low.

We were promised the same authenticity and liveliness in the other locations in Istanbul and Rome, but we didn't have the opportunity to explore those yet. While there probably won't be any widescreen support, resolutions from 1280x1024 pixels and upwards will be available. Also, the cutscenes shown to us were lacking in quality compared to the rest of the game, but will probably be polished up before release. Regarding the sound of the game, there simply wasn't enough to be heard to properly judge it yet.

For the most part, City Interactive's new adventure adheres to the gameplay of Art of Murder. New to the game are multiple-choice dialogs, which are often used for puzzles involving you clicking dialog lines in a specific order to get important pieces of information and the like. Additionally, both inventory and logic puzzles will find their way into the game. The puzzle examples that were shown to us were varied and for the most part designed logically, all in all being a bit more complex than the ones found in Art of Murder. Similar to the developer's last adventure, most of the hotspots are relevant to progression. However, City Interactive plans to include more clickable objects to add more complexity and variety to Testament of Sin's gameplay. Moreover, the game world is supposed to be more palpable and atmospheric.

In our demonstration, interactive objects were often difficult to discern, for example a tiny ID picture in a large-sized frame. However, the built-in hotspot indicator turned out to be a big help in such situations. Apart from this, no gameplay assistance is planned, but judging from the first level, frustratingly complex puzzles aren't to be expected. However, it seems that City Interactive sometimes takes a few liberties with regard to logic: [small spoiler alert] to get our hands on an important document hidden behind a wooden panel in an office, we had to break said panel open. Instead of using an expendable item that won't be missed once it breaks, we were forced to use our car key for this task. However, since we needed it to use our scooter soon afterwards, we had no choice but to have it repaired. It remains to be seen whether the player will be forced to handle situations in a similarly bizarre manner later on in the game.

Some people may have been quite surprised to see the game's title change from Testament of Faith to Testament of Sin just a few days after its official announcement. At the Games Convention, it also became known that the protagonist's biography has been slightly readjusted. It's difficult to judge how far such actions reflect on the quality of a game that is supposed to come out at the end of the year, especially with a sequel to Art of Murder already in the works at the same time. However, this behavior doesn't exactly indicate a very orderly working method on the part of the developer.

Still, the overall impression we got of Testament of Sin was far from bad. After all, the game looks pretty good thanks to the new engine, its gameplay is enhanced by the addition of multiple-choice dialogs and dialog puzzles, and it still has a good foundation for an exciting story. Moreover, there's still some time left until its release in the last quarter of the year. We are certainly excited.


This article was originally published on the German website Adventure-Treff. It has been translated and reprinted here with permission. Translation provided by Max Ledwon.