What is Obsidian?

At some point, the word adventure will produce only a yawn in the jaded gamer. After all, the majority of games of this genre are slow, hunt-the-hot-spot, juggle-the-inventory yawners with dull plots and a smattering of multimedia. Obsidian does degrade at times to spot-hunting, but it is different.

Obsidian makes a great effort to work more in a dream-based paradigm than a logical one — words appear out of clouds and golden rings, but you’re still faced with Byzantine bureaucracy before you can get a bridge fixed. It’s like walking through a Kafka novel, one beautifully rendered in 3D. You begin in the real world, albeit in 2066, playing Lilah, the mother of a nanotechnology that’s repairing the earth’s environment (nice to see a female protagonist without a big gun). On a hiking trip in the northwestern United States, Lilah and her partner. Max, discover a growing black rock (the Obsidian), and Max is swallowed by it. Lilah — you — to the rescue.

Gameplay is similar to most first-person adventure games since Myst’s arrival. Click the onscreen arrows to navigate (though in Obsidian, your motion plays as movies from point to point) and interact. The script and acting are almost there, though sometimes rankle. One annoying point: When you have to accomplish a task, characters constantly tell you exactly what to do, though not how. Guess that’s part of the bureaucratic nightmare.

Expect to spend more than 40 hours getting through this dream world. You’ll enjoy some of the best visual design in gaming (visual and audio puns abound, too) and music from Thomas Dolby’s Headspace studio. It’s an interesting experience, this Obsidian.

Turner, D. D. (August 1997). Obsidian. MacAddict. (pg. 69).

Download Obsidian for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver