DESCRIPTION:
Music that I have ripped from the game.

Cold Dreams is an action/puzzle platformer made by Immortality Production in 1995. With a fusion between middle age, egyptian and futuristic setting, it feels a lot like He-man. Actually, that's a fair comparison because you play a muscular warrior on a different planet then earth that has a combination of old culture/weapons and sci-fi technology, and of course there are dinosaurs living there too. With some hacking and graphic changes one could have re-titled it "He-man in the Mazes of Eternia" and made Skeletor, Hordak and King Hiss the end bosses! Wouldn't that have been something?! But enough dreaming, let's get on with the review of a game that sounds like it has a lot to do with just that.

The plot is that somewhere in the depth of the universe a sun without name shines onto the red planet Swandah. "The collapsed caves of the red planet are shrouded into legends. Inside, ancient monsters and dragons guard the chambers and refuse the passage of the mortals. The last trial of courage will be to cross the dark maze and battle against the heroes of the underworld. Many knights of the universe have already tried to overcome the temptation of this quest. But no one has returned from Swandah until now... Maybe you will be the one..."

As mentioned you control a muscular warrior, dressed in armor and brown "He-man shorts". In addition to walking and jumping he can climb, pick up and use objects and throw weapons. There are 5 different weapons: Magic, Golden Flash, Knife, Axe and Flying Bomb. There's a fixed amount of these on each level, so be careful as to which weapon you use on different enemies. Also, Flying Bombs must (mostly) be spared to blow up certain walls, so if you use them at the wrong place or to neutralize an enemy and then get to a blocked path, then tough luck - you're stuck. And wherever you go in the game you might take a bad step and find yourself in a place with no way out. This is why you have to save often, but luckly the game lets you do that at any given time. If you do get stuck or fed up you can commit suicide by pressing G. There are also ordinary doors in the game, and two types of keys that unlock them. Silver keys open chamber doors, and gold keys open exit doors.

Now, if all this stuff seem a bit too much for you then don't worry - Cold Dreams actually comes with a trainer that helps you to understand it's world, a rare thing for a mid 90's PC game. The game also supports joystick, and sound and music can be turned on and off individually during gameplay. An interesting note is that the music for this title was made with the Loudness Sound System, an Adlib tracker known for it's ritch sound back in the day. It was used to create music for games like Fuzzy's World of Miniature Space Golf, Dig it! and the classic Tyrian, and gave the Midi-format (mostly used in PC games at the time) a run for the money. While the tunes in Cold Dreams aren't as memorable as in those titles, they are nice enough and generate a fitting mood.

As you can see, Cold Dreams has a lot to offer a fan of the genre. It's a fun platformer, right up there with many Apogee games of the era, so I give it a solid 3. Still, it's sad that the one thing that separates Cold Dreams from the standard platformer - the robot - isn't available to you as much as it should. Had there been more usage of it, a change of the dumbest looking enemies, a more resonable plot and a matching game-title I would have given Cold Dreams (or as I call it - "Aliens Ate My Uncle") a 4.

Note:

This is originally a German verison translated to english by Juergen Hoffmann. Everything but the nag-screen at the beginning is in english. However, the game must have been released in english also since it had publishers one could order it from in United Kingdom, Australia and Canada (see Ordering on the game's menu). The only hint about the orgins of the game itself though comes from its creators names; Marosi Balàzs and Jancsina Attila, which sound Hungarian.

(From Abandonia)