Review Uninvited Developer: ICOM Simulations Publisher: Mindscape Genre: Adventure Release Date: 1987 (Original Release Date) Platform: NES, Pocket PC, C64 Retro Review by February 24, 2005		Trade for this game at: Buy this game here:

Imagine you’re driving along a country road shooting the breeze with your kid brother. Now what could happen to ruin such a fine evening? Maybe a shadowy figure jumping in front of your car from out of nowhere, making you lose control, crash into a tree and lose consciousness? Well, that’s exactly where Uninvited begins. You have just regained consciousness with the realization that your brother is gone – looking for help maybe? The only logical place he could be is the mansion off to the side of the road. What you and your brother are about to discover, is that the mansion is entirely devoid of human existence and is inhabited by an evil entity and its minions of ghosts, zombies and assorted horrors. So off you go, unknowingly into the mauls of death to save your brother before he is possessed by evil.

Uninvited is an “old school” first-person adventure released in 1987 – surprise, first person perspective was not “discovered” in 1994! – and it features a unique interface that only appeared in the first four adventures by ICOM Simulations – Uninvited, Shadowgate, Deja Vu 1 & 2. The screen is split into 6 parts. The main part being the graphics window, where the locations and all the action are shown. From the graphics window you can take almost everything and drag’n’drop it in the inventory window. And when I say everything, I mean it! The game plays more or less like real life would be. No disembodied voice will scold “You don’t need this” when taking an item. If you can carry it, you can take it! This means, of course, that you can lug around lots of useless items that will never be needed and that will create the need for you to be very careful as regards your inventory decisions.

Apart from the graphics and inventory windows, there’s also the commands window, which includes the 8 basic commands of the game; the “yourself” window, which is used to perform actions to yourself, like eat food or drive a spear through your heart(!); the exits window, which shows all the available exits of the current location; and the dialogue window, where all text, descriptions etc, are displayed.

The puzzles are mainly inventory based. This doesn’t make them easy though. As mentioned previously, Uninvited plays out like real life. No voice from out of nowhere will tell you that you need to save an expendable item for later if you try to use it at the wrong time; no invisible hand will pull you back if you try to enter an area without a crucial item without which further progress is impossible. You are entirely on your own and each move needs to be planned carefully – trial and error does not work here! Apart from inventory puzzles, there are a couple of other things that you’ll need to do in order to progress in the game. For example, you will need to find and construct spells which, when uttered, will be of great help (to this day, approximately 16 years after I played the game for the first time, I still remember the words to those spells!).

While you do all that, you should never forget that you’re messing with evil forces and evil is not forgiving. The entity that resides in the mansion wants to take your mind over, and you only have a limited amount of moves (thankfully not a short one) to complete your task before that happens. The rest of the horrors that roam around in the mansion are less complicated - they just want you dead! And death is everywhere – behind any closed door, around any corner. Save early, save often, that’s a motto that will prove very essential for success!

The Windows remake and the Amiga version (for its time) feature some very beautiful graphics, that create a haunted and solitary atmosphere – the DOS graphics just plain suck, so don’t even consider that version! Sound is practically non-existent: some creepy noises, the end-game music, the dying music on Windows or Amiga’s disturbing evil laughter when you die (which, for some reason, was not passed on to the windows remake). That’s more or less all there is, but the lack of music and speech (what speech? You’re alone anyway!) actually work in favor of the game and help intensify the unsettling feeling of loneliness. Besides, if you ever found yourself in a similar situation in real life, I doubt you would have a band following you around!

Overall, Uninvited is an excellent example of old school adventuring. This is not a game that’s recommended to the “21st century junkies” out there. No 3D, T&L, 4xAA or pixel shading effects here. Just an excellently designed pure adventure, which completely absorbs the player into its world, creating an atmosphere steeped in fear and loneliness. You will literally feel that your mind and your life are threatened as you explore the mansion where not only are you unwelcome, but you are also uninvited.

Amiga Screenshots

Uninvited is currently available to purchase for PocketPC at Portable-Games.com, and coming soon for Palm OS

Final Grade: A
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System Requirements (Windows Version):

• Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP
• 486 or higher CPU
• 8 MB of RAM
• 5 MB free disk space