Download Pocahontas

There is a legend of an Indian chief's daughter who was in love with a European colonist in North America. I believe you’ll all recognize this legend as the story of Pocahontas; if nothing else, it was made famous by Disney’s animated movie (and its sequel), although they are only loosely based on historical facts.

The game before you is not based on Disney’s film, even though it came out in the same year (I bet that didn’t exactly hurt the game's sales), but it is still not historically accurate. As the name suggests, you control a Native American girl by the name of Pocahontas, and need to guide her through her adventure. In addition, you will also get to control John Smith and play his side of the story as well.

The game features a very good soundtrack and great graphics. You can control the character either with the keys or with a mouse (which is not the best possible method if you ask me, but it also gets the job done). You can always press Space to skip the animated cutscenes (the videos get boring after you've seen them a few times). More details about the game itself can be found in the POCA.TXT file included in the archive. To run the game, start the POCA.BAT file, not pocahont.exe; otherwise you will not get any sound or animations.

Apart from just jumping and climbing, Pocahontas can also use some magic, which adds a puzzle aspect to the game. There are some obstacles you just can’t overcome yourself, and you’ll need the help of the world around you to overcome them. John Smith, as an adventurer, naturally carries a firearm with him, which you can use to shoot.

The game has a practice mode, which you can enter by choosing Practice on the opening screen, so you can get comfortable with the controls. In the options menu, you can also select the difficulty level, but even the toughest level still isn't all that challenging. You also have the option to reload a saved game. Pressing the space bar during the game brings up the load/save menu, which is a very useful feature.

It definitely is a very pleasant game, but it seems a bit too easy. Personally, I don’t mind if a game isn’t frustratingly difficult -- it’s easier to get into it and enjoy the gameplay -- but if you want a real action-filled challenge, then I guess this game isn’t for you.

To be completely honest, I guess the game was made with a slightly younger audience in mind, not hardcore hack-and-slash gamers, as there is some cuteness in it as well (just take a look at the opening animation).

Well, if you really want to enjoy a somewhat simple, yet appealing action game with nice graphics and sound, Pocahontas is the game for you!

If you experience any problems with the sound or animated sequences you should probably change the pats. Be careful, I had many problems before getting it all to work, so if you’re not comfortable with editing DOS files you can just leave it as it is and have it all in the default folder POCA (so DOSBox reads a folder C:POCA). The game was originally released on a CD (which also included speech (which could make this archive too big).

You might want to speed up DOSBox to 6000 cycles. I’m not sure about the default speed, but 3000 cycles seem to run the game to slowly and anything above 6000 seems somewhat fast (the sound will always play at the same speed, so you can’t judge by that).