EcoQuest: The Search for Cetus

Remembering the name of "Sierra", it is somehow customary to sob and tear your hair about lengthy series of quests, did they tell about the routine routine of the police, the unforgivable adventures of the royal offspring, the parody space saga or something else. But there was another “quest” - with the light hand of domestic reviewers, who gave the name to this whole business - who somehow got rid of this extras. And probably, the point here is that it was made for the younger audience.

Kids games are almost bad by definition. There is no motivation to make a good game, but there is - to do something for the target audience, the needs of which are myths and legends - and no specifics. And if the educational task has also been set, consider that the units will cope with the project.

Ecoquest presents one of the most important themes of the 1990s - ecology and environmental pollution. Not that these problems have faded into the background these days, on the contrary - oil leaks in the Gulf of Mexico from the extraction site of British Petroleum, the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and finally the discovery of large spots of non-decomposable plastic particles that drift in different parts of the world’s ocean, and much more, - but in the 1990s, it was customary to talk about this much more.

“Ekokvest” is trying to instill in children an interest in global tasks: the cessation of the use of the ocean as a general dump and the preservation of the diversity of the animal world. Even pixel hunting here revolves around the problem of garbage collection. Our hero has with him a mythical bag for storing waste, where during his adventures many artifacts thrown to the bottom of the sea will fall. And for this, in the best traditions of Sierra, there are additional points.

So, according to the story, Adam and his father live on the seashore, researching ocean pollution and developing ways to clean it. Well, the father is engaged, and the son doesn’t interfere: he is still ten years old, and judging by his height, even less. One day, Dad is away on business - and Adam is left alone with the dolphin, which they nursed in their laboratory. The dolphin was not easy, and reasonable and even talking, told the hero about the underwater city, located on the site of ancient Greek ruins, where all the inhabitants are equally pathos names in style and where the sperm whale is the king. And that he needs help to bring the marine economy in order. After that, a team of orderlies rushes into the laboratory, grabs a little boy under the arms of sprinkling saliva, makes an injection and carries away a limp body. Titles. A curtain. But not in this story. At Ecoquest, it's all true.

Therefore, puffed up the scuba and collected a few possessions, that is, all that they forgot to nail, glue and weld, - Adam goes to help Delphinius bring Elyria in order. Most of the game he will hold underwater with scuba diving behind his back. Realism, goodbye - you are a stranger here.

The rest of the game is not very different from other adventure games of the same manufacturer - the graphics are at the level, the music is at the level, the duration is almost at the level. Among individual entertainments there are tagging, labyrinth, selection of combinations on bas-reliefs of ancient columns, and in general, as in almost all quests, these are some riddles related to finding the right items and using them in the right places. Everything is quite simple, and I did not have to disgrace, looking at solutions or hintbuki. Well, maybe once.

For the player in the typical quests of the Sierras of the early 1990s, Ecoquest is casual, for a modern player, the project is quite serious, if only lightweight. Judge for yourself: you cannot die, you cannot get stuck, jigsaw puzzles do not require breaking the bricks with your head. And if we look at the attached manual, it turns out that all these points are just a concern for the tender childish consciousness. No deaths for you, no reboots, but still worth it - underwater bugs rarely, but accurately bite through a scuba diver suit.

“Ekokvest” passed sidification - “improvement” and addition of the publication when transferred to CD. Not so much was done, although not so little, namely, the full voice of the characters and the narrator was recorded. The second part of the ecological adventures was not honored with this honor, although it came out a couple of years later.

The game is pleasant and not very difficult. The designers are Jane Jensen - the lady who gave us the unsurpassed detective-mystical series Gabriel Knight and a number of others. Ecoquest is independent, does not drip onto the brains of "facts", although it included a separate book. This is a good quest that opens eyes for both children and adults to the problem of ocean pollution, and does it very gently and calmly. Almost all the fish can be saved, get plastic bags from their larynx and protect their existence. You also say thank you. Perhaps, with Ecoquest, and it is worth starting to get acquainted with the quests of "Sierra", and leave the hardcore for later?