“Discworld” is a good visualisation of Terry Pratchett’s classic novels.
So, to make it short: This game has a funny story including a cowardly and incompetent “wizard” named Rincewind. He’s living in the “Invisible University”, where he’s getting the job to hunt down a dragon. To really understand what a disaster that means for Ankh-Morpork (the city where this game plays), you have to read the novels.
It might be worth mentioning that everything here takes place on a frisbee-like world, carried on the shoulders of four elephants that are standing on a giant turtle flying through space…(and there’s a lot more of that in the game and, of course, the novels).
Like in most pure adventures, the controls are simply point-and-click.
But the gameplay in Discworld feels slow, what now-and-then leads to frustration.
You have different options to take on a dialogue (sarcasm, questioning, and such) and use an inventory to manage all kinds of crazy items you find while playing.
Ah yes, the inventory. One more thing that is taken from the novel and nicely adapted to the game: “The Luggage”. I’ll use a quote from Wikipedia, which describes it perfectly…
“A wooden chest with lots of little legs, big teeth and no respect for normal dimensions. It can also do your laundry.“ Any questions?!
The graphics really fit the game but are exceeded by Discworld II in every aspect. Especially the animations are sometimes lagging.
The music is good and helps to build the atmosphere, but there’s just nothing memorable to it.
Now, about the sounds: The voice acting is well done and there are some moments where you really have to laugh (Rincewind is voiced by Eric Idle of the Monty Pythons).
Sometimes the dialogues are just too long, though, and can even get boring.
It can take some time to beat Discworld. That’s mainly because of the very obscure and often frustrating riddles. They are crazy and that fits the theme, but sometimes it just feels dumb when you finally solve the riddle.
Once you play through the game there really isn’t any reason to play it again (except that you didn’t play it in a long time), just like with most adventures.
Finally I recommend this game to every fan of the Discworld novels and to everyone who just likes playing adventures. However, one thing is for sure: Terry Pratchett is a true genius!