Torin's Passage is a game for children, but like all really good games, books, and movies with similar target audience it also has that knowing wink towards older audience, and the best thing about this game is that it "winks" a lot.
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The first point&click of my life. Played way back in 1996.
It's kind of weird when you think about how out of the league it feels compared to your typical Sierra game. No dead-ends, an in-game hint system and logical puzzles. A family friendly adventure made by the man behind Leisure Suit Larry.
It's just too bad it's not anything amazing. It's a very low-key adventure game that you will want to play only after you beat up all the classics. And it has some very underused features like the 3D projections or the main character's companion.
For the French - https://lacritiquedumoment.wordpress.com/2024/02/15/torins-passage/
It's kind of weird when you think about how out of the league it feels compared to your typical Sierra game. No dead-ends, an in-game hint system and logical puzzles. A family friendly adventure made by the man behind Leisure Suit Larry.
It's just too bad it's not anything amazing. It's a very low-key adventure game that you will want to play only after you beat up all the classics. And it has some very underused features like the 3D projections or the main character's companion.
For the French - https://lacritiquedumoment.wordpress.com/2024/02/15/torins-passage/
I love this game, from childhood to adulthood, the art is amazing, the voice acting is really good, the story is fun, and I love puns!
Congratulations, you did it! Ah, it's nice to see someone else has an Al Lowe sense of humor! That's why you get to hear this, my very own personal Easter Egg instead of the boring, plain old death message you see before you there on the screen. Anybody who comes all the way through this game asking everybody you meet about this evil sorceress named Lycentia and then FINALLY finds her, and then tricks Dreep into following a recording of her voice, and then DOESN'T use the book of magic on her, but instead plays the bagpipes, deserves much more than just another boring, old death message.
So, here's my personal thank you for playing the game, and now, enjoy the ending! But whatever you do, don't tell anybody how you got this message. Instead, just taunt them with, "Why, I got a personal message from Al Lowe at the end. Didn't you?"
So, here's my personal thank you for playing the game, and now, enjoy the ending! But whatever you do, don't tell anybody how you got this message. Instead, just taunt them with, "Why, I got a personal message from Al Lowe at the end. Didn't you?"
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2018/02/08/torins-passage-1995-pc-mac-review/
It was 1994, and video game designer Al Lowe, who was responsible for the Leisure Suit Larry series, was watching Mrs Doubtfire with his daughter in a movie theater with a crowd people. As he was watching the movie, he noticed that there was two groups of people the crowd. Children, who were laughing at the slapstick happening to the characters, and adults, who were laughing at the jokes that passed right over the heads of the children that they were with. When he noticed this, he asked himself: “Why isn’t there a computer game that my 9-year-old daughter an I could play like this?” And thus, the idea of Torin’s Passage was born.
Torin’s Passage was released on October 31st, 1994 despite it not being that spooky, and it was developed and published by Sierra On-Line. It was released for MS-DOS, Windows 3.1 and 95, and Mac. It was written by Al Lowe, who had previously written and was famous for Leisure Suit Larry, as well as Freddy Pharkas Frontier Pharmacist. Although, this wasn’t Al Lowe’s first kids game, previously working on The Black Cauldron, Mickey’s Space Adventure, and Donald Duck’s Playground.
The game begins on a dark and stormy night, as an evil warlock acts out his plan to kill thie king, queen, and their baby while they’re all sleeping. While he successfully manages to kill the king and queen, the baby manages to escape with it’s nursemaid, who happened to be taking care of it after it had woken up in the middle of the night.
15 years later, we find our protagonist, Torin Fahrman (buh dum tss), living on a farm with his parents. After his father sends him off on an errand, his parents get kidnapped by an evil sorceress, who he learns about after talking with a passer by, who happened to see the whole thing. The passerby tells him about how this evil sorceress is located in the worlds below, a series of worlds that are nested inside of each other inside of the planet, like a Russian nesting doll. Torin embarks on a quest with his sidekick, a pink dog-looking shapeshifting creature named Boogle, to save his parents.
The game’s story is pretty simple, but good enough to get the game going. For adults, it might be a bit simple to properly enjoy their attention, but there are plenty of jokes in their that an adult would get something out of. Probably the least funny part of the game are The Bitternuts in the second world. They’re a parody of 1950’s sitcoms, and the laugh track playing after every joke gets pretty old and annoying real quick.
And if Torin’s voice sounds familiar to any fans of 90’s First Person Shooters, that’s because he’s voiced by Mike Shapiro, who voiced Barney and G-Man from Half-Life. I guess he’s accidentally had a place in my childhood across both games.
Unfortunately, the game’s simple story is the result of the developers intending to have four sequels, which was supposed to chronicle the rest of Torin’s life, from his marriage to Princess Leena and assumption of the throne in the second game, up to his death in the fifth game. With Ken Williams (company founder) departure from Sierra and disappointing sales, along with the eventual buyout of the company prevented this from ever happening. It’s still nice to get a glimpse into what could have been.
Visually, Torin’s Passage is a fantastic looking game for it’s time, and has aged well, with it’s Disney inspired graphics, despite the fact it had a limited 256-color palette. The backgrounds are all hand-painted and look gorgeous, the game knows it because the interface came with a ‘Scroll Handle’ that let’s you look at any part of some screens that contain a large piece of art for it’s background, both horizontally and vertically. And it worked because every now and again I would just scroll to look at the background art.
The game also features 3D objects too. They’re a bit low detailed from today’s perspective, but between that and the highly stylized art style, it actually works well with the rest of the games aesthetic. The soundtrack is also pretty solid, done by 3-time Academy Award winner Michel LeGrand. Those 3 awards were for ‘Summer of ’42’ (1971), ‘Yentl’ (1983), and the original song “The Windmills of your Minds” from the ‘Thomas Crown Affair’ (1968). I don’t exactly think of these when I think of Torin’s Passage, but that’s one hell of a resume.
During the game, you can pick between Torin’s inventory and Boogle’s inventory. This is because, like I mentioned earlier, Boogle has the ability to change into varying objects. I feel like Boogle could have made a fun toy, but I guess this games low sales prevented that, but I digress. The middle of the inventory has a platform where you can view anything in your inventory in 3D. This only comes in handy 2 times in the whole game where you can actually interact with an item, but for 1995, this was incredibly neat being able to see your inventory up close and in 3D.
Unfortunately, a few parts of the game really bring down the experience. In chapter 4, there is a giant lava maze that’s difficult to navigate to find an item that sparkles, but only every couple of seconds. Apparently it was designed by Al Lowe’s daughter, while is absolutely adorable and is an incredibly nice thing to do, but is not exactly the best art of the game. I genuinely feel bad criticizing the drawing abilities of a child. The chapter right after has a slope you have to try and climb, but you have to click on very specific parts of it, and it’s practically pixel hunting, all while the slope tells you what parts you can actually click on in a high pitched voice. All for the sake of the pun “slippery slope”.
The game does come with a hint feature represented by an hourglass with a question mark that pops up if you’re having a bit of trouble, which is useful for the younger players who might have trouble with some of the more difficult puzzles of the game.
While Torin’s Passage might not be a classic point-and-click game for either Sierra or the genre as a whole, it still has a ton of Sierra’s charm and polish, and is definitely worth checking out for any massive point-and-click adventure game fan.
It was 1994, and video game designer Al Lowe, who was responsible for the Leisure Suit Larry series, was watching Mrs Doubtfire with his daughter in a movie theater with a crowd people. As he was watching the movie, he noticed that there was two groups of people the crowd. Children, who were laughing at the slapstick happening to the characters, and adults, who were laughing at the jokes that passed right over the heads of the children that they were with. When he noticed this, he asked himself: “Why isn’t there a computer game that my 9-year-old daughter an I could play like this?” And thus, the idea of Torin’s Passage was born.
Torin’s Passage was released on October 31st, 1994 despite it not being that spooky, and it was developed and published by Sierra On-Line. It was released for MS-DOS, Windows 3.1 and 95, and Mac. It was written by Al Lowe, who had previously written and was famous for Leisure Suit Larry, as well as Freddy Pharkas Frontier Pharmacist. Although, this wasn’t Al Lowe’s first kids game, previously working on The Black Cauldron, Mickey’s Space Adventure, and Donald Duck’s Playground.
The game begins on a dark and stormy night, as an evil warlock acts out his plan to kill thie king, queen, and their baby while they’re all sleeping. While he successfully manages to kill the king and queen, the baby manages to escape with it’s nursemaid, who happened to be taking care of it after it had woken up in the middle of the night.
15 years later, we find our protagonist, Torin Fahrman (buh dum tss), living on a farm with his parents. After his father sends him off on an errand, his parents get kidnapped by an evil sorceress, who he learns about after talking with a passer by, who happened to see the whole thing. The passerby tells him about how this evil sorceress is located in the worlds below, a series of worlds that are nested inside of each other inside of the planet, like a Russian nesting doll. Torin embarks on a quest with his sidekick, a pink dog-looking shapeshifting creature named Boogle, to save his parents.
The game’s story is pretty simple, but good enough to get the game going. For adults, it might be a bit simple to properly enjoy their attention, but there are plenty of jokes in their that an adult would get something out of. Probably the least funny part of the game are The Bitternuts in the second world. They’re a parody of 1950’s sitcoms, and the laugh track playing after every joke gets pretty old and annoying real quick.
And if Torin’s voice sounds familiar to any fans of 90’s First Person Shooters, that’s because he’s voiced by Mike Shapiro, who voiced Barney and G-Man from Half-Life. I guess he’s accidentally had a place in my childhood across both games.
Unfortunately, the game’s simple story is the result of the developers intending to have four sequels, which was supposed to chronicle the rest of Torin’s life, from his marriage to Princess Leena and assumption of the throne in the second game, up to his death in the fifth game. With Ken Williams (company founder) departure from Sierra and disappointing sales, along with the eventual buyout of the company prevented this from ever happening. It’s still nice to get a glimpse into what could have been.
Visually, Torin’s Passage is a fantastic looking game for it’s time, and has aged well, with it’s Disney inspired graphics, despite the fact it had a limited 256-color palette. The backgrounds are all hand-painted and look gorgeous, the game knows it because the interface came with a ‘Scroll Handle’ that let’s you look at any part of some screens that contain a large piece of art for it’s background, both horizontally and vertically. And it worked because every now and again I would just scroll to look at the background art.
The game also features 3D objects too. They’re a bit low detailed from today’s perspective, but between that and the highly stylized art style, it actually works well with the rest of the games aesthetic. The soundtrack is also pretty solid, done by 3-time Academy Award winner Michel LeGrand. Those 3 awards were for ‘Summer of ’42’ (1971), ‘Yentl’ (1983), and the original song “The Windmills of your Minds” from the ‘Thomas Crown Affair’ (1968). I don’t exactly think of these when I think of Torin’s Passage, but that’s one hell of a resume.
During the game, you can pick between Torin’s inventory and Boogle’s inventory. This is because, like I mentioned earlier, Boogle has the ability to change into varying objects. I feel like Boogle could have made a fun toy, but I guess this games low sales prevented that, but I digress. The middle of the inventory has a platform where you can view anything in your inventory in 3D. This only comes in handy 2 times in the whole game where you can actually interact with an item, but for 1995, this was incredibly neat being able to see your inventory up close and in 3D.
Unfortunately, a few parts of the game really bring down the experience. In chapter 4, there is a giant lava maze that’s difficult to navigate to find an item that sparkles, but only every couple of seconds. Apparently it was designed by Al Lowe’s daughter, while is absolutely adorable and is an incredibly nice thing to do, but is not exactly the best art of the game. I genuinely feel bad criticizing the drawing abilities of a child. The chapter right after has a slope you have to try and climb, but you have to click on very specific parts of it, and it’s practically pixel hunting, all while the slope tells you what parts you can actually click on in a high pitched voice. All for the sake of the pun “slippery slope”.
The game does come with a hint feature represented by an hourglass with a question mark that pops up if you’re having a bit of trouble, which is useful for the younger players who might have trouble with some of the more difficult puzzles of the game.
While Torin’s Passage might not be a classic point-and-click game for either Sierra or the genre as a whole, it still has a ton of Sierra’s charm and polish, and is definitely worth checking out for any massive point-and-click adventure game fan.