Schizm: Mysterious Journey: The Mysterious Journey of Schizm Company: DreamCatcher Interactive We recently received a playable demo of Schizm: Mysterious Journey, a new adventure title put out by Dreamcatcher Games. Much like Myst, Schizm promises a puzzle/adventure experience in a decidedly different world, allowing the player to explore different environments, interacting with them, and solving puzzles that open up new key areas. The demo itself was relatively short, but it perhaps gives a good indicator of the rest of the game. In it, your character has to re-inflate a ship?s gasbag. This, of course, is a puzzle; you?re helped along the way by a hologram of a doctor friend, who (in typical puzzle fashion) keeps breaking up, so you only catch snippets of the description. The puzzle itself is fairly simple once you know what the game is asking of you, and is very reminiscent of other games in the genre. Like the more recent Myst III: Exile, you can look around at will in a given location; Schizm seems to do this by means of a movie, giving a slightly grainy look to the environments, but also allowing more animation instead of static areas. The navigation also takes some getting used to -- wheeling around and moving with the mouse isn?t immediately intuitive -- but it?s simple enough once you understand how to do it. -Sunfall to-Ennien, GameVortex Communications AKA Phil Bordelon