Heaven's Dawn Download (1995 Adventure Game)

The Gods have created a beautiful world, but humans have created sin. So mankind is cursed and should disappear. One of the heavenly beings doesn't want to obey, and asks her servant to go back in time and find someone from another dimension who can break the curse.

Jeremy, a painter from New York, goes out at night and learns the story about a cursed land from a old man sitting on the sidewalk. Suddenly the man disappears, leaving his necklace behind, and Jeremy is transported to the cursed land. He ends up in an empty palace where he finds some diaries, the only remaining signs of King Drew III and his daughter Cassandra. More people are disappearing and parts of the land have become barren. Only if Jeremy succeeds in breaking the curse he will be able to return to his dimension.

Heaven's Dawn is a 3rd person fantasy adventure, similar in style and length to The Legend of Kyrandia. The graphics window is presented as a painting on an easel. By right-clicking a floating and scrollable inventory is accessed. By moving an inventory item over the main character a short description is given. A bag with paint brushes hanging on the easel gives access to the options window and an attached "note" gives access to a notebook/to-do list.

Heaven's Dawn includes, besides a rich variety of well-designed puzzles, a few mini games (fast reflexes aren't required) and a slider puzzle. Later in the game a travelling map will become available. The game comes with music and sound effects; voice-overs are restricted to intro and ending. Saving is limited to seven slots.

One of the most obscure point & click adventure games ever made, Heaven's Dawn is an average game created by Taiwanese developer Art 9 Entertainment, translated into English and marketed in Australia by Manaccom. The game is yet another "clueless human gets sucked into a strange alternate reality" kind of game, except it is not as interesting as Accolade's Altered Destiny. You play a tourist who found himself listening to an old beggar who tells about God's curse on mankind. God, it seems, is now angry at humans for "creating sins," and has ordered 5 deities to curse mankind. The next thing you know is you get sucked into this strange fantasyland, beggar's necklace in hand. Naturally, you must find out where everyone has gone, save the world from God's wrath, and find your way home. All in a day's work.

The gameplay will be familiar to every fan of LucasArts/Sierra adventures. Run your mouse cursor around the screen, clicking on interesting-looking objects to read their descriptions or pick them up. Right-click brings up the inventory screen, where you can click on objects to use in the gameworld. One nuisance about the game is that it offers no description of inventory items, although fortunately most items are not entirely alien, and most puzzles are easy. Speaking of puzzles, most are variants of the traditional find-key-to-unlock-door puzzle, and although there is a few neat magical artifacts you can use, you will not be stumped for long in this game, except for some cases of annoying pixel-hunting.

Despite pleasant VGA graphics and a good feel of "traditional" point & click adventure, Heaven's Dawn has nothing to lift it up from mediocrity. The writing and plot are banal, and the puzzles are uninteresting. The game does not have the sense of humor of Monkey Island, the wacky but clever puzzles of Discworld, or intriguing plot twists of Dragonsphere to keep you interested. If you are a fan of adventure games, you will probably play this one anyway despite what I say ;) But don't expect to find another forgotten classic. Heaven's Dawn is not so bad it deserves to remain obscure, but it is also not good enough to promote. Too bad.

How to run this game on modern Windows PC?

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