Ambermoon by Thalion Software

Ambermoon ^TM is part two of the never completed Amber Trilogy. Set 90 years after Amberstar^TM, you play the grandson of the original character.

You start, in the bedroom of your grandfather. Explore your house and see what you can find to start you on your quest. Don't forget to talk to your grandfather perhaps he can tell you something that can help... "What's that? You want a glass of what?" There are quite a few hidden rooms in your house, so don't be too quick to leave!

The landscapes and cities are still the graphically excellence of Thalion but now they are even better, all antialiased with excellent animations. The stories and links to the original Amberstar are quite cool.

"What was that Cat called in Amberstar? The one who I saved from the Rat King! D'oh I'll have to play Amberstar^TM again! "

The 3D sections are no longer the classic 90 degree dungeon system, but a full 360⁰ 3D engine. I think it uses a special copper trick, using a little known screen mode that is "Chunky" rather than "bit-planes" allowing texture mapping even on a basic 68k A500. Although to get the nice floor and ceiling effects a fast CPU with an FPU is required. (Or an Emulator)

[Screen Shot of one of the many Puzzles]

Since the last adventure the Island of Lyramion has changed quite a bit, after the collision of the third moon the Island is now a series of smaller islets, So you are going to need a boat at some stage! (Or a Broom!). As you travel about the land you'll bump into some of the characters from Amberstar^TM or their children and reckognise old places!

Although I am sure they have got the names of a few returning characters wrong! If you want to solve a few puzzles you might have to get your copy of Amberstar out. "Hmm, look over there! That Paladin looks a bit cold..... looks strangely familiar too!"

The Automap has a few cool new features, better layout, and a special "return to this point" feature, where you can click on a point you have been to on the map and return to this point immediately (Handy for avoiding a few monsters !)

After years of thinking this classic game was only ever going to be fully playable by gamers able to read German. An English version has emerged. I think this is excellent. It is not a hack/translation but an official product that was never published due to the demise of Thalion^{^TM}. It seems to be complete (It was the final version) although I have not played it to the end. As you can see from the picture on the right, it was version 1.07 (The last version of the German Ambermoon I have seen was v1.05)