Evil Twin: Cyprien's Chronicles Preview

There are few games today that bring something fresh and ingenious in computer entertainment and most games are actually copycats of famous blockbusters, or just their sequels. One of those rare brilliant ideas I heard recently was about the action adventure Evil Twin: Cyprien's Chronicles, which will make our editor Dex drool over his monitor for days as he loves platform games in all shapes and tastes.

In Utero, the designers of Rayman, are about to give us something completely different. (John Clease close-up - Ed.) They are working on a "gothic" platform game with unusual atmosphere and an even more unusual name: The Evil Twin. In contrast to the cute and colorful Rayman, the hero of Evil Twin is a little boy with a chaotic hairdo called Cyprien. He has been cast into a weird nightmarish world, which is the product of his own sick imagination. (Hmm... sounds a bit like Alice - Ed.)

Who does he think he is? Iron Mike??

That's an ugly looking bastard.

After the tragic and mysterious death of his both parents (There ya go - Ed.), Cyprien has been put into an orphanage. The other kids in the orphanage decided to make a surprise birthday party for Cyprien, but to their surprise, this made Cyprien mad, and as soon as he left the room, an enormous tentacle monster appeared and attacked the kids. In the meantime, Cyprien speaks to his imaginary friend Lenny the bear. After he expressed his desire to stop imagining characters like Lenny, he got thrown into an odd world where everything is made out of cloth, the skies are dark gray, and strange creatures lurk behind every corner. His super-sling is his only means of defense in this strange world.

Young Cyprien has the ability to transform himself into a super-hero in black outfit and white hair called SuperCyprien. You will only be able to transform when you gather a sufficient number of masks (a common gameplay element in modern platform games). SuperCyp's primary attack is casting fireballs, and his secondary attack is casting a wave of lightning, which can eliminate a large number of surrounding enemies. In his normal state, Cyprien can jump-hit his enemies, or use a super jump to jump over the widest of chasms.

The in-game view can be from the first or third person perspective. The first person view can come in handy if you want to target something. When you switch to it, the game looks like any other FPS, apart from the fact that you're holding a sling instead of a plasma rifle. In the course of your travels, you will find various add-ons for your sling, including a sniper-add-on and extra ammo. As there are various types of ammo, I expect there will also be different types of enemies with resistances to certain ammo types. This means that proper choice of ammo can prove to be crucial in certain moments. You will also be able to solve some complicated lever puzzles (An oxymoron?? - Ed.) from the first-person view, but this will render you helpless to enemy attacks for some time. The first-person view might be good for targeting, but the third-person view is much better for spotting enemies. When in this mode, you will be able to rotate and zoom the camera freely.

The controls will be just like in Rayman, and all experienced Rayman players should have no trouble in coping with Evil Twin. For those of you who are still in the dark, it comes down to jumping from one platform to another in full 3D surroundings. The camera loosely follows your hero, and pans to important situations and locations as needed. You can fix a point of view if you want to, but that is not much of a challenge. The entire system leaves you an impression that the entire world revolves around the main character.

Unlike Rayman 2, Evil Twin will have a much darker design, but the levels and characters will still be rich in texture and highly detailed. The designers used a lot of smoke, fog, and lighting effects to create their strange world. All of you who are big Beetlejuice fans and adore Tim Burton's Nightmare before Christmas, and enjoyed playing American McGee's Alice, will surely enjoy this game. The game spans over eight islands, which our brave Cyprien has to pass with his faithful sling in order to get the chief villain who is responsible for his nightmares.

There will be over one hundred different monsters (with variations). One interesting point in design is that the monsters and surroundings have been created using only a couple of basic colors, but with a lot of texture shading effects. You will encounter all sorts of things, from gigantic insects to strange mutated beasts.

We should have high expectations for this game, as it is the first of its kind (well among platform games, at least). We are still to see how this game will reflect on the position of its slowly fading genre. We shouldn't forget the effect Rayman had on the computer game market. American McGee's Alice brought something new to the genre and Evil Twin only goes to prove that morbid platform games are here to stay.