Ludography
80/100
Players5 ratings

Where to get it

Death Gate cover

1994 · Legend Entertainment · Adventure · Puzzle

Death Gate

Death Gate is a classic adventure game from the much revered Legend Entertainment. The studio is known for developing games that include exceptionally well crafted puzzles and a wacky sense of humor which frequently breaks the fourth wall and plays to a wide assortment of offbeat puns. Moreover, the company has emerged with a winning streak of fantasy and sci-fi games based on popular literature adaptations. The most famous of these are Frederick Pohl's Gateway and Terry Brooks' Shannara.

Released
1994
Platforms
MS-DOSmacOS
Genres
AdventurePuzzle
Developers
Legend Entertainment
Publishers
Legend Entertainment
Modes
Single-player
Perspective
First person
Themes
Fantasy
Country
United States
Languages
English, German

About

Death Gate is an adventure game loosely based on Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's fantasy book series The Death Gate Cycle. Legend Entertainment released it for MS-DOS compatible operating systems in 1994. It received several awards. The box cover is the painting that Keith Parkinson created for the third book, Fire Sea.

GOG.com released an emulated version for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux in January 2018. It was removed from sale two months later.

›Story

The story of Death Gate adapted for the game begins in ancient times. Years ago, Earth was an arena of war between 2 races of superior wizards battling for leadership of the world. The Sartan, who base their skills on knowledge, claimed to want to only bring peace and to protect all beings from aggression. The Patryn, who live their lives by instinct, wanted to achieve freedom from any restraint and pursued self-realization at any cost.

"Magic is in our blood,” both races said about themselves. Truly, their magic potential gave them the power to reshape the world. There were other races that inhabited the Earth: Elves, Dwarves, and Humans, deprecatingly called as the mensch by the Sartan and Patryn. Because they did not stand a chance in a fight for their own independency, they accepted the roles of servants in the battles of the more powerful.

The conflict lasted centuries. Ultimately, the loosing Sartan decided in desperation to bring a risky plan into life. With the help of Dwarven blacksmithery, they created a powerful magical artifact called the World Seal. With the symbolic and magical act of breaking it, the Sartan sundered the world to 5 pieces (or realms), unwillingly killing millions of mensch in the process.

Successively, 4 of the 5 realms represented the 4 elements: air, fire, earth, and water. The Sartan "mercifully" imprisoned the Patryn in the fifth realm, known as the Labyrinth. During centuries of imprisonment, the Patryn struggled to resist and to get out from the clutches of the sentient Labyrinth. It tortured them with harsh environments, traps, and monsters, initially with the given task to simply break their spirits.

However, over time, the Labyrinth evolved into a wild, murderous entity, becoming deadly to the Patryn, who still fought bravely for survival. As the story comes to the present times, after centuries of confinement, the most powerful Patryn of his generation, Lord Xar, finally succeeds in breaking the final gates of the Labyrinth. From that moment on, he has been struggling to help his people escape.

Keywords

  • magic
  • based on - book

Media

Death Gate screenshot 1

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Story

The player takes the role of Haplo and starts in the Nexus with Lord Xar. Lord Xar tasks Haplo to visit the four worlds, Arianus, Pryan, Abarrach and Chelestra and retrieve the seal pieces of these worlds. Xar plans to undo the Sundering with the Reformation, the act of recreating the Earth again and he needs the seal pieces to do so. To travel to the other worlds, Haplo is given a ship with a magical steering stone.

If the symbol of a world is magically engraved on it, the ship can travel to that world through the Death Gate. Xar gives Haplo the symbol of Arianus, the realm of air, and Haplo sets sail.

Reception

In PC Gamer US, Trent C. Ward wrote, "Players who're used to the visual charms of a King's Quest or a Noctropolis may find this a tough game to get interested in. But if your only concern is for substance, then Death Gate's a winner." He declared it the best Legend "text-and-pictures" adventure released up to that point.

James V. Trunzo reviewed Death Gate in White Wolf Inphobia #55 (May, 1995), rating it a 4 out of 5 and stated that "Fantasy graphic adventures simply don't come much better than this. Death Gate guarantees 50 hours' fascination and challenge. If you like to take a cerebral approach to your gaming, try to master Death Gate!"

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
MS-DOS31 December 1994Worldwide

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Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.