Spectacle is aptly named – it’s a visually resplendent throwback to a bygone age. Evoking games like Shadowgate and Uninvited, it’s a first-person adventure where half of the fun is stumbling into deadly encounters. Perhaps I shouldn’t linger by that giant snake, much as I’m curious. Cue hilarious game-over screen.
Today, these sudden deaths are seen as outdated design – and rightly so, when we have to return to a previous save. But Spectacle just reverts things to before the encounter. You get all the fun of the custom death, then carry on with your puzzling business as if it never happened. That’s really the only modern concession in a game built on the shoulders of those old ‘Macventure’ games. However, with modern hardware comes the power to dream a little bigger.
This is still a game of exploring screen-by-screen, as you roam a gorgeous fantasy realm inspired by Middle Eastern mythology. Ultimately, you’re trying to escape the place, although that will involve solving genuinely difficult puzzles across a large, interconnected world. We’re trusted to figure things out for ourselves, in a game that practically demands the use of a notepad and pen. There’s a scale here that the developers of the Macventure games could have only dreamed of.