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Retrogaming: test of La Chose de Grotemburg (Ubi Soft, 1987, Amstrad CPC)

May 05, 2022 — Nico Cartron

Continuing with my tests of CPC games, this time with one of Ubi Soft's first games.


Reminder about the rules for testing

  • I'll spend maximum one hour on the game
  • I'll briefly present the game: story, what the goal is, who created it.
  • I won't be rating it, as it's very subjective, but will rather list what I liked and didn't like.

The Game

Wait, an English article about a French-only game?

Yeah, I hesitated before writing this article, as the whole game is in French, but since my initial goals with those articles was to retest the games I liked the most when I was young, I still think it makes sense.
Plus, it's a good way to improve your French skills ;)

Cover

As usual with games from the late 80's, the cover was "straight to the point", with some drawings on the front, and a pitch about the game at the rear.

You can see it's using the very first Ubi Soft's logo - which back then was still written as 2 words (versus Ubisoft today).

Goal

Upon coming back home, you find your wife dead - she's been killed by someone... or something.
You must find it!

Loading

Just type |CPM to load the game.
The typical CPC music starts playing, and the load cover appears, then is fully shown when pressing a key:

You are then presented with the games' credits (as you can see, back then games didn't require a huge team, since there were only 6 folks working on it!) along with the very first screen of the game.

Test

Start

The game starts at your home's porch, where you see traces of blood:

Basics

The screen is broken down in 3 parts:

  • Main window: shows you the content of the room/place where you are
  • Top right: a compass telling you where you can go (N/S/W/E) - you can then use the keyboard's arrows to move
  • Bottom box: allows interacting with the game, by typing commands such as:
    • EXAMINER (LOOK)
    • PRENDRE (TAKE)
    • LIRE (READ)

Playing

So your goal is to understand what's going on in this city, and to do so, you are exploring your surroundings, looking at things, and moving in different streets and places:

You then start realising that there's quite a bunch of different places to visit, with some of them where you can clearly die straight away (e.g. when crossing the street, you're hit by a car), so I started drawing a map to keep track:

I don't remember doing that when I was young, so either I was a lot brighter/got better memory back then, or I am now more experienced and don't want to waste time ;)

The game is full of funny jokes, but bear in mind it's 35 years old, so to get them, you must be old enough to get the references (and of course speak French), like in the 2 pictures below:

  • this "hunter" is indeed Rambo,

  • and the guy smoking in the tavern is Serge Gainsbourg (hence the "No comment" in the text, which is one of his most well known songs).

The game can be finished relatively quickly, but I must admit I used the snapshots feature of my CPC emulator, to avoid having to start from the beginning everytime I died (yes, guess how I found out that there are streets where you die if you cross them? ;)

Upon finishing, you throw some holy water to the "Thing", and you win:

Conclusion

What I liked

  • Easy to play: as with most games of that time, you can play straight away
  • Fun: the game is not monotonous as there's a lot of fun, both in the images, jokes and interactions with the characters
  • Well balanced difficulty: the game is neither not too easy, nor too hard - of course there are times where you'll have to scratch your head and spend a bit of time on a screen, but that's OK :)
  • Graphics: they're really colored and well done, especially for a "Mode 1" CPC - again, bearing in mind it's a 35 years old game

What I didn't like

  • Without the snapshot feature of the emulator, finishing the game would be a lot harder! :)

TL;DR

Yet another game that I love, and which I think really aged well. Playing "La Chose" is fun and enjoyable.


Tags: Amstrad, Geek, Emulation, Retrogaming


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