Oxphar
(Ere Informatique, 1987)
Knowledge of French is required in order to play this game properly.
You have been transported from Earth to the land of Do. Your name is now Oxphar and your quest is to find the blue stone of Savanah. Do is a surreal land of fantasy in which you will meet many different kinds of characters, both human and non-human. At the start of the game, you are carrying nothing, but picking up a bank card will allow you to access the armoury. Objects can be taken from it and used appropriately, but this is where this French adventure game disappoints. It’s not at all obvious what the objects are; you can’t examine them, or your surroundings, and you can’t talk to any of the characters. Most players will have considerable difficulty in working out the use of the large majority of the objects. The pictures accompanying each location are astoundingly beautiful and well drawn, but they’re wasted on a mediocre game such as this one.