Indigo Prophecy: The Ultimate Which Way Adventure Company: Atari Remember those books you would read several times as a kid? You know, you get to the end of a page and it asks you to make a choice. Choose one way and you go to page 10, choose another and you go to page 42 - "which-way books". Indigo Prophecy takes that basic concept, gives you who knows how many more choices and gets rid of the pesky page flipping. The game (and demo) starts off with you in control of a regular-joe character named Lucas Kane. Well, not exactly "in control" of him. When we first see our character, he is sitting on the john in a diner bathroom when a perfect stranger walks in and Kane falls into a trance. Your character stands up and starts jerkily walking towards this nobody, pulls out a knife and repeatedly stabs the person. Kane comes out of his trance and finds himself an unwitting murderer. And the odd thing is, you aren't the only unsuspecting killer. All over the city, strangers are killing strangers for no obvious reason. Your goal in Indigo Prophecy is to figure out what really happened before the police track you down and arrest you. So imagine yourself as Kane. Last thing you remember you were at one of the booths in the diner eating your dinner and now you are standing over a bloody body with the murder weapon in your hand. What do you do? Well, I was able to at least try everything I could think of. You can drag the body into one of the stalls (or not), you can wash your hands (or not), you can get rid of the murder weapon (or not), you can try to clean up the blood on the floor (or not), etc. But you don't want to take too much time in the bathroom, because the cop at the diner's counter that has been reading the newspaper and drinking who knows how much coffee is about to need to go to the restroom. Eventually, the cop will get up and start walking his way to the bloody room; if you are in there when he walks in, the jig is pretty much up. If you leave the bathroom all cleaned up and blood free, then you can probably make it out the door before he discovers the body. If you moved the body then it takes him an extra few seconds to find it, but he will find it. I was flat out amazed by the wide variety of choices I was presented with. If you walked out of the bathroom with blood all over your hands, then you run into the waitress. The cop gets up and asks what's wrong. At this point, you can either run out the backdoor or get arrested. If you manage to get cleaned up and decide to just leave the diner, when you reach the door, the waitress gets your attention. You get treated to a nice, quick internal monologue about whether or not she knows something. At that point you can either decide to run for it or ask her what she wants. If you talk to her -- she reminds you about the bill, if not then you've made it out the building. I can only imagine what that choice will lead to in the future. After all a man just up and running away is a bit suspicious at a murder scene. Other choices that I played around with included paying the bill, sitting back at the table and continuing to eat the food, or going up to the cop and trying to confess. I also sat at the diner's counter and watched some TV. If/when you make it out the building, there are several different ways you can go. Do you take the subway or hail a cab or just walk away on foot? I can see how each of these choices might affect the future of the game (after all, the cabbie might remember you and where he dropped you off at), unfortunately I don't know what happens after that point, since that is where the demo ended. Indigo Prophecy uses an unusual system to interact with objects in the game world. It's mouse movement-based interaction system will have your mouse flying all around your pad as you draw short lines up, down left or right in order to tell the game what you want to do. If you approach the faucets in the bathroom, you can either use the left faucets (click and drag left) use the right faucets (drag right) or look in the mirror (drag up). This system is used in pretty much every aspect of the game (short of actually walking around). If you want to sit down, follow the line next to the sit icon that appears. The same thing applies for actions such as eating, looking at the bill, paying the bill, talking to people, leaving the building, trying to escape out of the bathroom window, etc. The other control oddity was when I went to move the body, once I had the corpse in my arms I was prompted to repeatedly press the left then right arrow keys and the faster I hit the buttons, the faster I moved the body. I can see this particular action sequence showing up in plenty of areas of the game even though it was only in one place in the demo. Indigo Prophecy doesn't just follow our unsuspecting killer. You can choose to be three other characters as well and follow the case from their perspective. The other characters include Lucas' brother Marcus and the two detectives on the case, Carla Valenti and Tyler Miles. You will have to control your character's mental state as he or she becomes stressed or anxious because of their environment or who they are dealing with and the choices you make - all the while trying to find out exactly what is really happening. Indigo Prophecy spans 44 acts that will have you making split second decisions, interrogating witnesses and tons of choices that will affect the paths and choices you can make later on in the game. The unusual yet fitting control scheme and the ability to take on different points of view in the story will definitely make Indigo Prophecy stand out. Look for it to hit the shelves later this month. -J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer Related Links: Indigo Prophecy Home Page Other Games Developed by Quantic Dream Other Games from ATARI