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The Sacred Rings
 Umang continues his journey in The Sacred Rings, keeping the precious rings safe and sound for the Keepers. It's the sequel to Aura: Fate of the Ages, and it's looking quite interesting.
For this preview I played the first section of the game, exploring the home of Nikifor where Umang finds himself, literally, deposited at the start of proceedings. It's a fascinating abode, as you will discover, one that moves if you can deal with the task at hand.
Like Aura, The Sacred Rings is a first person perspective game with intermittent cut scenes when you (as Umang) achieve particular objectives. It has a point and click interface, very simple, with rapid node to node movement as there are no transitions. When you walk you gently blink from one spot to the next. At each stop you can swing the cursor and look around a full 360 degrees to admire your surroundings, and there is a fair range of vertical movement too. The cursor will indicate when there is something of particular interest.
It's an imposing metal world, a warren of corridors, staircases, railings and platforms, with giant doors that grate and grind open. Yet it's by no means sterile. Almost every room has some kind of fantastic or intricate contraption, or maybe some bookshelves, a desk to search, or some dingy shelves to sort through for useful items. Being metal, rusty brown and dull silver are the dominant colours, although it looks moderately lived-in with bits and pieces scattered around. You do get some reprieve from the cosy claustrophobia via a couple of short outdoor excursions.
 In this alien environment exploration is the name of the game. A journal keeps track of some of your findings but your own notes are necessary too. So you'll need to keep pen and paper handy because there are clues in books and strange symbols to jot down. Colours are important, as well, to make the right connections. Thus the challenges mostly rely on your careful observations. What symbol might you need to enter into a display, or perhaps some jottings in a book are important? Plus there are some tasks where you might need to go searching for a particular object, and a couple of more abstract puzzles where fiddling does the trick, or maybe a careful strategy.
Thus the challenge in this first section primarily revolves around making sense of various mechanical contraptions and getting them to run smoothly — until the very end at least. It's more or less one big power-up and in that respect it reminded me a little of Myst, although it's not so alien or esoteric. Like many first person perspective games, there is negligible character interaction and that only happened in cut scenes for this preview build. The limited dialogue is subtitled and so are the sprinkling of comments that Umang makes.
For intrepid adventurers The Sacred Rings looks to be one to watch out for. The highly textured graphics do a great job of conjuring up an elaborate, multi-levelled structure that closes in around you. It's really fascinating to explore. Perhaps the outside areas are a bit static, a semblance of a breeze would have helped, but this part of the game is about the interior of that metal abode. It's a place worth visiting and the puzzles are of medium difficulty and invite exploration to work them out. Of course there's more of the journey that I haven't taken yet ... it beckons.
Copyright © Rosemary Young 2006.
All rights reserved.
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