E3 06: The Sacred Rings Impressions

LOS ANGELES--The Sacred Rings is an adventure game for the PC and a sequel to Aura: Fate of the Ages. We met up with the folks from The Adventure Company to see what kind of an adventure The Sacred Rings has in store for us.

The story in The Sacred Rings picks up where Aura left off. You play as Umang, a student of the "good" clan. After venturing into the territory of the "evil" clan and finding the sacred rings in the previous game, you now have to escape with the rings--and hopefully--your life.

Because the game takes place in the territory of the evil clan, it has a much darker, more sinister feel to it. The areas of the game we saw included a dark castle with skulls and other creepy artifacts strewn about and an outdoor area filled with crumbling, ancient-looking structures.

The Sacred Rings is a point-and-click puzzle game just like its predecessor. There are lots of puzzles to solve, and we got to look at a few of them. The first puzzle we saw was a machine that needed to be powered up by flipping fuses around until they lined up correctly. However, it wasn't as simple as that, because when one fuse was flipped on, another would flip off. The solution to the puzzle was revealed by pulling up a sketch that showed exactly how the fuses needed to be aligned. The final game will contain similar hints, but they will apparently be a bit less straightforward.

Another puzzle we saw involved three platforms and a set of five statues of varying sizes that fit on top of one another, similar to Russian Matryoshka dolls. The objective was to move all of the statues to the far right pedestal, but the trick is that you can only place large statues on top of smaller statues. It seemed like a fairly challenging, but fun, puzzle. The final puzzle we saw was a simple combination puzzle where four panels on the top of a metal sphere had to be pressed in the correct order to reveal the item inside. Your reward for completing each puzzle is a rendered cutscene that furthers the story.

The final version of The Sacred Rings will reportedly contain more than 400 different areas in three distinct worlds that blend the sci-fi and fantasy themes of the game. It's currently scheduled to ship in the third quarter of this year, so if you're a fan of adventure games stay tuned to GameSpot for more updates on The Sacred Rings.