Download I, Damiano - The Wizard of Partestrada

How many games start with you meeting Satan himself? Well this intriguing text based adventure named I, Damiano does.

The game is placed in the medieval Italy and you’re the main hero by the name of Damiano. You start in hell and the game does include archangels (both fallen and un-fallen). So far, so good.

The game features PC speaker sound (which isn’t all that annoying) and CGA graphics with some animations. The graphics are quite nicely done actually. The main part of the screen is reserved for the text. The pictures are there mostly for the visual effects and are thus quite un-functional (still they are a nice addition). Unfortunately this game has a very limited vocabulary (only two words at the time). This really takes away much of the gameplay, because you can’t give more complex orders, so the puzzles can’t be all that complex either.

The main focus of the game seems to be the gauge between the pictures and the text. This shows you weather your good or evil. This is very important. You started the game by meeting Satan and if you don’t wish to end up in his realm, you need to stay on the good side.

To help you succeed I provided a walkthrough. If you feel like you’re stuck, you might take a look at it.

All in all I think this is a solid text based adventure, but not complex enough. I do like the idea of the good vs. bad gauge that replaced the score you could achieve in some other text based adventures, but it’s not as helpful. In other games you at least knew that you did something right, when your score increased. I’m giving this game a rating of 4. They did try to make it good (solid plot line, nice graphics with even some animation and quite enjoyable sound), but they didn’t take enough care of the gameplay itself.