Future Wars

In the year 1989, a simple window cleaner is working outside of a skyscraper. Intending to play a prank on his angry boss, the unlikely hero discovers a secret passage leading to a time machine along with mysterious alien documents. Operating the device transports the protagonist to the year 1304, where he is given a seemingly ordinary task of rescuing a lady in danger. However, he soon finds out about a much more.

Released: 1989
Platforms: Amiga Atari ST Atari ST/STE MS-DOS NEC PC-9800 series Sharp X68000
Genres: Adventure Point-and-click adventure Science Strategy Turn-based strategy
Developers: Delphine Software International
Publishers: Delphine Software International
Modes: Single-player
Perspective: Third person
Themes: Science fiction
Country: France
Composers: Jean Baudlot

About

Future Wars, subtitled in Europe as Time Travellers and in North America as Adventures in Time, and known in France as Time Travellers: The Menace (French: Les Voyageurs du Temps: La Menace), is an adventure game from Delphine Software International, released in 1989. The game is mainly the work of Paul Cuisset (story and programming) and Éric Chahi (graphics). The game was intended to be the first of a series of adventure games revolving around time travelling but later episodes were never made.

Keywords

time travel
death
steam
alien invasion
countdown timer
non-player character
zero to hero
reciting movie lines

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Future Wars is played by left-clicking for character movement, and right-clicking for character actions. The actions available in the right-click popup menu are: Operate, Examine, Take, Use and Inventory. "Use" had a subcategory which enabled the player to drag and select the items in their inventory.

Story

The player is not given a name throughout the game and the game cursor identifies him only as "hero". According to later references the game starts in 1990.

The player starts as a window cleaner outside a skyscraper on an electric elevator platform, when "Ed the boss" opens a window and shouts at him, causing him to knock his cleaning bucket over. Initially to refill his bucket, the player then can enter the building through the now-open window and after examining a map with a missing flag-pin, discovers a secret passage leading to a hidden room with strange machines in it. There he acquires some documents in an alien language which he keeps in the inventory.

Reception

Upon release, Future Wars received positive reviews.

Computer Gaming World's Allen Greenberg praised the game's story as good, its graphics as "very imaginative and at times absolutely striking" and its musical score as "a respectable soundtrack which many will consider superior to most of those composed and released for theatrical films" but stated the same graphical detail was frequently hiding important objects vital to solving the game and hindering the player's movement in certain cases. It also criticized the Cinematique engine as "not quite the innovation Future War's designers claim it to be—similar features have appeared in games by Sierra as well as Lucasfilm."