Aleshar - World of Ice is a headache-inducing third person RPG made by the aptly named Hypothermia.
Aleshar is an uncharted arctic island secluded from the rest of the world, which experiences winter all year long. You play the role of a young man who was born on Aleshar with rare and mysterious powers that allow him to use magic; such people are known as Elementalists due to their mastery of the natural elements in the world. Unfortunately, it is illegal on Aleshar to possess such power without joining a group known only as "the cult," a corrupt and decadent organization of Elementalists. Many years ago your grandfather, who possessed the same powers as you, refused to join the cult and attempted to flee its influence. However, he was caught and executed.
In order to prevent you from sharing your grandfather's fate, your father sent you to live with an old hermit far from your home town at a young age. The man was rumoured to be an Elementalist in hiding. One day, he sends you away on an errand. As you are about to return to his home, you are stopped by two men in red robes who demand that you go with them. You immediately realise that they are members of the cult who have come to take you away. You are chased back to your trainer, who instructs you to flee to a nearby town while he distracts the cultists. And so begins your adventure. You must train your skills and your powers and stop the cult once and for all.
Aleshar - World of Ice allows you to customise your character in several different categories: job, skills, weapon ability, and character traits. These will determine how your character interacts with other characters and how well he will fare in battle and in the wilderness. The primary method of increasing your skills in-game is to actively use them. For example, the primary mode of transportation in the wilderness is skiing, so skiing often will raise your skiing skill and allow you to move around faster.
A major aspect of the game is interacting with other characters. Speaking with characters works the same way as in many text-based adventure games: greet the character, and use keywords to learn more about that character or about what he or she knows. Certain words are written in different colours to signify relevance.
The game is almost completely in real time, so you have to keep progressing in order to prevent your character from starving to death, especially in the wilderness. You can purchase food from other characters in the game, or you can use your hunting skill to try and gather food in the wilderness. When fighting enemies, they will attack you if you just sit still.
Navigating from town to town through the wilderness is very difficult even with a map, since the game does not display your present location in relation to other locations on the map once you acquire one. You are given coordinates from time to time, and you can find your way by using a sextant, which will tell you what your present location is. Unfortunately, you have to figure out for yourself how to read the coordinates given to you by the sextant, and find your own way through the wilderness. The map helps only by giving you a vague idea of where your destination lies. This is much harder than it sounds, as your vision is very restricted, even in the daytime.
The battle system is simple, up to a point: if you use melee weapons, walk into a monster and you'll attack it. If you use missile weapons or magic, attack them as appropriate. Fighting monsters is not merely a matter of hacking them to pieces and moving on. Depending on your skill, you may hit different body parts of monsters. For example, hitting an arm could break it and render it useless until treated, while hitting the head may cause a fatal blow. Monsters may also disable your character in this way.
Overall, the game is pretty good, except for the graphics. Of course, as a rule, good graphics don't make a good game. However, Aleshar's graphics are unique in that playing the game may strain your eyes and give you a headache because of how small everything is. Nevertheless, Aleshar had the potential to be a good game.
The creators of Aleshar recommend Gravis Ultrasound for sound and music settings; unfortunately, although DOSBox emulates Gravis Ultrasound, the game won't work with this setting. The only reasonable setting I found is the Sound Blaster mode, which doesn't produce fuzzy and loud noises.
A word of caution: Some of the scenes that appear in the beginning of the game and throughout are rather gory, so this game is not recommended for those with weak stomachs (or those who have recently finished a meal). Also, I would certainly recommend reading the manual (available in the extras section) before starting the game, as you won't know the important keyboard shortcuts. Here are some that should get you started:
- E: enter city- G: pick up equipment of a killed monster- H: hunt- M: map (if you have one)
Although Aleshar: World of Ice existed as a shareware game for more than 3 years the developers have now decided to release the game as public domain meaning that it is free to download. The main theme in the game is magic as many spells are involved and you also have to avoid getting caught by the Cult of Wisdom since they are the only ones that are allow to use magic.
While you could expect a simply story, simple skills and other quick roleplay features because of the freeware status Aleshar: World of Ice is actually offering an impressive list of features and is a much larger game than many commercial roleplay games. Like with a game like Ultima 6 you see the game from the top although controlling your character and the general gameplay is much smoother. Some of the small but well done features are that you have to remember to eat food or you will starve to dead. Of course you also have to find food before this happens so besides the regular enemies so you also have to keep hold on this kind of things.
There are tons of different spells and they have been divided up into two categories - friend and hostile. Of course you will use the friendly spells mostly. Note that all spells are described within the game so I highly recommend you take a look at them as not all of them are obvious to understand just from the name. A well done game for the true roleplay player.
Aleshar: World of Ice is one of the best shareware RPGs ever made, although it remains very obscure due to lack of publicity or marketing (and perhaps high cost of registration as well ;)). The game is set in a distant island of Aleshar, where it's always winter and cold. Your goal is to find ways to harness and use the Elemental Powers within you, while avoiding prosecution by the powerful Cult of Wisdom (the only legal user of magic) that hunted and executed your grandfather who refused to become a priest.
The game is played from an overhead perspective, much like old Ultima games, except the game uses isometric graphics instead of 2D tiles. The game plays like a standard RPG, with some nice touches and unique skils. For example, high skiing skill allows you to travel faster, and high climbing skill will make you move faster on snow slopes. Magic plays an important role in the game: once you learn how to use magic, you will use a combination of runes and elements to cast spells in the game. You can adjust the power of each spell by varying the number of runes used. One of the best things about the magic system in Aleshar is that each spell has two modes: hostile and friendly. When you aim the spell against an enemy, it will be harmful. When you cast the same combination over an ally or yourself, it will be helpful. Discovering what both modes mean for different spells is always fun and interesting.
Don't be mistaken by the game's shareware (and now freeware, thanks to the designers) status-- Aleshar is not a simplistic RPG you can finish in a few evenings. The gameworld is huge, the combat always challenging, and you will have to pay attention to real-world factors such as hunger and fatigue level. You can hunt for food, but you may die of starvation if you're not successful. The graphics are a bit too small for my taste, but once you get used to it, it's not that bad. Overall, Aleshar is a quality shareware old game that is well worth a try for all RPG fans, especially anyone who likes long game and challenging fights.
People who downloaded Aleshar: World of Ice have also downloaded:
Albion, Amulets & Armor, Abaddon, Aethra's Chronicles, Alternate Reality: The City, Dark Heart of Uukrul, Daemonsgate, Anvil Of Dawn
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