Dylan Dog - Through the Looking Glass (a.k.a. Dylan Dog 2) Download (1992 Adventure Game)

The second game from Simulmondo based on the Italian comics character Dylan Dog, "horror detective", is a first-person view adventure game largely based on Lovecraft's literary works and their mythology (Cthulhu, the Necronomicon). While you're called to investigate on the murder of a famous archaeologist, an unprecedented volcano activity is taking place, with the scientists unable to find an explanation. The game is divided in two parts, and is quite different from other Simulmondo productions based on Dylan Dog.

First off, here is some information about Dylan Dog. Dylan Dog is an Italian horror comic series, in which the main character is a sort of "nightmare detective". His investigations deal with a wide range of phenomena, from paranormal manifestations to grisly serial killers. The comic (at least the first 100 issues, which were made when the creator, Tiziano Sclavi, was active) is really original and rich with personal thoughts, philosophies, and quotations from other books, comics, and movies (remember that this was in 1986 - long before the DVD era). All of this is displayed in a clever and sometimes poetic (not crappy or emo-like) way, showing a really interesting and deep world outlook. Dylan himself is a deep and multi-faceted character, having been physically modeled after Rupert Everett from the movie "Another Country", and named after poet Dylan Thomas. Unfortunately, Dylan Dog is widely unavailable outside of Italy, apart from some translations published by Dark Horse Comics. Sclavi, the creator of the series, also wrote some books. One of them, "Dellamorte Dellamore" was adapted into a movie by Michele Soavi. The English title is "Cemetery Man". Watch it if you are curious.

After this long but necessary introduction, let me tell you about the game. The game takes its title from comic book #10 of the series, "Attraverso lo Specchio" (through the looking glass), and the title screen reflects the comic's cover page. However, the game has nothing to do with that comic and tells a totally different story.

The plot is simple: One night, a professor of archeology is murdered by a strange and horrible creature which came out of a mirror in his home. The professor's daughter decides to hire Dylan Dog to investigate the horrible death of her father. And so the game begins.

The game is a first person point-and-click adventure. Playing is really easy: Left-clicking examines the object which the mouse is pointed at; right-clicking twice followed by a left-click combines two objects, or if both right-clicks are delivered on a single object, interacts with it. The inventory and the travel and dialogue options are on the bottom of the screen and work just like the objects in the game.

The gameplay is constructed in a very clever way. It is possible to get permanently stuck because you missed something important in the strict timeline of the game, or by simply dying, so when this happens the game brings you back to the last "checkpoint". In this way, the game's difficulty is not altered, and it doesn't become frustrating or impossible.

Of all of Simulmondo's games, Dylan Dog was the only one which was translated into English. Sadly, the translation is very poor quality, and sometimes damages the atmosphere of the game which is otherwise excellent, having been heavily influenced by the works of HP Lovecraft.

Simulmondo also made other games based on the Dylan Dog comic series. They were strange platform-like games made for PC and Amiga, and were loosely based on the stories of the comic books which were sold at low prices in newsstands. The company also made other similar platformers based on other comic book characters like Spiderman, Diabolik, Nathan Never, and others.

How to run this game on modern Windows PC?

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