A beautiful point-and-click Adventure Game for DOS PCs and Apple Macintosh from 1995, developed by Cryo Interactive. The plot follows Adam, the young prince of Mo, in his quest to unite various races of Men and various species of Dinosaurs. The game features nice puzzles, a detailed backstory, impressive graphics for its time and a truly awesome soundtrack.
The story itself is fairly simple; a long time ago in an alternative version of Earth, dinosaurs and humans lived together in harmony. Then, the evil army of Tyrann came down from the north, threatening to destroy everything. To stop them, a great human king rose from the kingdom of Mashaar. This King was known as the Architect, and he designed citadels to be built by dinosaurs while humans fed and protected them. This provided human armies an impenetrable garrison from which to defend, protecting whole regions from Tyrann attack. The evil predators were beaten off, and kept confined to the far north, too afraid to attack.
Then, the Enslaver, the son of the Architect, came to power. He hated all of the dinosaurs, and most humans too. He tore down most of the citadels, and the trust that once united humans and dinosaurs was lost. After the Enslaver died, the human king Gregor came to power in Mashaar. At about this time, the Tyrann returned in force, this time lead by a truly horrifying creature calling himself Moorkus Rex. At first, Gregor fought the Tyrann, but after the loss of his wife and daughter, he lost the will to fight and permanently withdrew to the last remaining place of safety, the Citadel of Mo. Years later, you play as Prince Adam, heir to the throne of Mashaar. You have lived all your life in this safe haven. You have come of age, and long to see the world, but your father forbids it. The game begins when a Pterodactyl named Eloi arrives at Mo with news from the north...
This game provides examples of:
- Adam and Eve Plot: Literally.
- Always Chaotic Evil: The Tyrann are vicious and destructive killers, with no exceptions.
- Artistic License – Paleontology: Played completely straight: the setting is a Captain Ersatz of Dinotopia, not a realistic representation of our world.
- Big Bad: Moorkus Rex. Turns out for all his talk, he's a Paper Tiger - once you shatter his illusions with the tablets, he turns out to be nothing more then a mouse! He can still kill you just fine before you use the cube, however.Eloi: King Gregor, Adam's father, brooded within the castle's massive walls, unable or unwilling to see that Moorkus Rex would never stop - until the whole world lay bleeding at his feet!
- Bittersweet Ending: You've defeated Moorkus Rex and observe the hatching of the Egg of Destiny in the White Arch. It's empty — just like in our world, the dinosaurs' destiny is to die out, leaving the world to the humans.
- Captain Ersatz: The setting and plot is very reminiscent of James Gurney's Dinotopia series.
- Chekhov's Gun: Staring at you the whole time you play, your cube-shaped mouse cursor. When you finally assemble the tablets, your mouse cursor is replaced by the resulting cube, allowing you to defeat Moorkus Rex merely by clicking him. Doubles as Foreshadowing.
- Cool Mask: Lots of tribes in this game have these, but the Ulele in particular stand out.
- Dragon-in-Chief: The Tyrann are the genuine threat. Moorkus Rex never leaves his lair, lies literally every time he opens his maw, and underneath the fearsome exterior is a tiny little mouse, which the tablets reveal at the end.
- Dumb Dinos: Averted. The dinosaurs are sapient and on equal terms with humans. Or rather, the ones that aren't Tyrann (although even they are presented as intelligent to some degree).
- Faking the Dead: Several instances.
- Moorkus Rex fakes the death of Mungo, Dina's lover, in an attempt to invoke a Heroic BSoD in Adam and company.
- Adam's mother and sister both escaped from the Tyrann raid to Shandovra, where Adam's sister changes her name to Shazia and became queen of the Chorrians.
- Furry Confusion: Several of the main characters — Dina and Eloi, for example — are Mesozoic reptiles and perfectly conversant in English. But quite a few more (the sauropods, velociraptors, mosasaurs) only speak very simple tongues, or don't speak at all.
- Interactive Narrator: Eloi, who tells the story and also acts as your guide and navigator. He was banished from the pterosaur roost, the White Arch, but redeems himself after you find and help him return the Egg of Destiny.
- Long-Lost Relative: Your dead sister who is, in fact, alive and well in Shandovra.
- Lady Land: Both the Kotu tribe and the Tribe of the Embalmers consist exclusively of women; while only the former are warriors, both wear very little clothing.
- Mundane Made Awesome: The Instruments of Fear you get from the Tribe of the Embalmers appear to be nothing more than a trumpet, a drum, and a bell. However, when played by the right male party members, they produce a sound which forces Tyranns to flee.
- Raptor Attack: Velociraptors are required to chase the Tyrann away from the valleys except in Shandovra, where you must use the Instruments of Fear from the Tribe of the Embalmers to drive away the Tyranns.
- Red Herring: Giving the final object of power to the Velociraptors in Shandovra does nothing to route the Tyranns in that region. Lampshaded by the Velociraptors if you visit them after giving them the final object of power.
- Scenery Porn: Everywhere, but a particularly triumphant example is the impenetrable Citadel at Mo.
- Stealth Pun: Moorkus Rex was a quite literal example of The Mouse That Roared.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The Egg of Destiny reveals that the dinosaurs have no future; for all you have done to save them from the ravages of the Tyrann and reunite them with humankind, their fate is unchanged: extinction. Only humans will carry on.
- Simpleton Voice: All Tammnians speak in one.
- The Sociopath: The Enslaver, who sent the dinosaurs and humans through hell just because he hated them and had no qualms injuring or even claiming the lives of others to suit his needs.
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Spiritual Successor: To Cryo's first Dune game. - Stripperiffic: Almost all of the female humans are this.
- The Kobu tribeswomen wear nothing more than bikinis - which look more like something the average person would wear, not the chainmail bikinis one might imagine a tribe of amazons would wear.
- The Tribe of the Embalmers and the queen of the Chorrians are the most blatant examples of this trope, being that straps and a loincloth are the only things keeping them from showing anything indecent.
- Terrifying Tyrannosaur: The Tyrann resemble Albertosaurus with war claws, and if they find you at least before you get your Instruments Of Fear, you're hamburger.
- Token Wholesome: Eve, leader of the Tammnians on Tammura, is the only female human in the entire game to dress decently, wearing clothing which covers her entire body.
- Vestigial Empire: Mo, at least at the start of the game. King Gregor hides in the one remaining citadel as Moorkus Rex terrorizes the world. Mo was implied to have been much larger under the reign of Adam's great-grandfather, the Architect, but his grandfather, the Enslaver, ruined things. As for Gregor, Adam's father, he at least made some effort to fight the Tyrann in his younger days, but stopped trying to restore Mo after his children were born, likely for fear of risking them.
- Weaksauce Weakness: The Tyrann, for all their fearsomeness, are driven away simply by making bad music with the right instruments. Moorkus Rex is an even more blatant example: he's really just a little mouse, and one click by the assembled tablet reveals this.
- What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: Thugg. He's sure good for finding apples, though!
- The Underworld: For the dinosaurs, The Valley of Mists, accessible by humans only by eating the Root of Ages. There, you finally learn the secret of the tablets from the Great Father: When all six are combined, they allow the user to see through all illusions, and represent the ultimate weapon against Moorkus Rex.
