Yet another Demonware game which appeared in the Early Warning scanner pages of Commodore Format. With a rather interesting title, it sounded like something quite special.
Nothing was really known about the game, but Games X magazine did a sneak preview of the title – showing Amiga screenshots of a game which looked pretty good (see gallery). The general basis was of a gap being bridged between space as we know it, and limbo state of hyperspace. Your faithful friend Spiff has been kidnapped by aliens and you now have to rescue him.
Contributor Daniel found that German magazine Playtime 91/1 mentions in a feature about Demonware, that the game should have a “50s Film-Noir” style with the Retro Future of the 50s. The game was also compared to Heart of China and Rise of the Dragon, with control of the game accomplished by using a series of pre-determined expressions and commands that could be cycled through and selected. So an interactive adventure overall, which would have been very welcome on the C64.
Seems possible that Demonware closed its doors after poor sales, and the games went with it. It is likely also that the C64 edition was never started, as they may have been waiting for the Amiga/PC lead versions to be completed first. Maybe someone will surprise us?
Additionally, with the Amiga/PC version expected to take up 10 disks – was a C64 version realistic? Or was a much cut down version planned?
Hopefully we can soon hear from some ex-employees about game and the others. But after speaking to one of the developers of Gem-X, they didn’t recall any other titles that never saw the light of day apart from Gem-Z.
Do you know anything more about this game?
Contributions: Andrew Fisher, Brendan Phoenix, Daniel
In the german magazine Playtime 91/1 about Demonware is written that it should have a 50s Film-Noir style with the Retro Future of the 50s. Sound a little like the Fallout-style…
Thanks Daniel, i’ll get that updated now :)