"Of Light and Darkness – the prophecy takes its inspiration from the "end time" stories concerning the coming Millennium. Awakening in a village somewhere between Heaven and Hell, you are the "Chosen One," thrust into a climatic battle between the forces of light and darkness. The Clock of Judgement is counting down to the end. Apparitions guilty of the Seven Deadly Sins, herald the coming of the Anti-Christ, Armageddon and the end of Paradise. As the chosen one, you are challenged to discover the secrets of the Millennium prophecies, while Gar Hob – The Dark Lord of the Seventh Millennium pulls you ever closer, with devilish, thought-provoking, game play."
– Excerpt from the Book of the Dammed
When Interplay’s Of Light and Darkness – The Prophecy begins you start out in the game booth. One of the options there is to take free tour of the first level, Do it! This is an interesting feature that I’ve not seen on many games in the industry, the chance to take a guided tour before the going gets tough.
You will enjoy and understand the game a lot more if you take the time, now and before each level. First of all you will have the chance to really enjoy the artwork by Gil Bruvel. Secondly the game will explain what is going on and what some of the different objects lying around are and what they can do your you, and finally you can explore the different rooms and meet the apparitions, including Ivan the Terrible, Marie Antoniette, Caligula, and learn their stories. Once you enter actually game play you enter a real time environment and an always ticking Clock of Judgement.
The part that I most hated and most enjoyed about the game is that there is no way to beat the clock. You can not save the game once you enter a level and each time you enter the level you will get a different challenge so you can not sit there and work on the same challenge over and over again. Even if you get lucky and get the same mission the solution to the puzzles may have changed.
Two of the most appealing parts of Of Light and Darkness are the game’s graphics and soundtrack. The graphics, which center around the artwork of Gil Gruvel, are wonderful. His work has been featured in museums all over the World. The simplest way to describe his work is surrealistic, and somewhat reminiscent of the work of artists like Salvador Dali.
The Soundtrack is by MF’ers, who provided over an hour of music and over two hours of dialogue including the monotone voice that keeps reminding you of just how little time you have left to save the world by redeeming the necessary number of apparitions.
My only serious complaint about the game is the way movement is handled. I admit that I am a little biased in this area. I just got done playing "The Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time" by Presto Software which has an awesome bubble like interface. Both games have you move to a point and then let you look around. But Of Light and Darkness has you look around at specific one screen pictures, while Legacy of Time lets you glide around in a complete circle and even allows you to look up and down as you move.
Overall a very interesting game with 3 levels of play and 20 different endings depending on what you do during the game. This is an enjoyable title, but breaks no new ground other than the exceptional quality of the artwork.