Inca (1992 - Coktel Vision)
The 1980s and 90s were a very fascinating time for video games, especially on the PC market. Game developers lacked a history of game design and experience, making their games a rich experimental experience that lacked polish, but was brimming with personality and potential. Inca is one such game. Developed by French studio, Coktel Vision, Inca sets you in the role of the golden warrior, El Dorado, chosen one of the Inca people, to recover the gems of time, energy and matter that were sought after by the Spanish conquistadors. While that may seem like a simple concept, the twist is that it is 500 years after the brutal decimation of the Inca people and the gems were sent out into the infinite expanse of space. You are tasked with traveling through the cosmos on a golden spaceship to locate the gems before they fall into the hands of the evil conquistador, Aguirre.
What is most fascinating is that the game is an odd amalgamation of space flight sim, static shooting gallery and first person adventure gaming. Each gem has you jet setting through space in the cockpit of your ship shooting asteroids and enemy fighters, exploring maze-like ruins and solving puzzles to acquire what you need to restore the Inca civilization and stop the oppression of Aguirre and his men.
The space combat scenarios were actually well done. The controls felt responsive with their two-button control scheme. Players used the mouse to navigate your ship and the left and right mouse button were reserved for firing your guns and accelerating your ship respectively. The combat situations felt varied as you blasted and avoided asteroids, shot down enemy fighters, or came face to face with enormous, looming Spanish galleons.
The other segment of space combat was a bit hit or miss. At times, you would dive down into a trench on the planet surface Star Wars-style and reach the end of the trench before the conquistadors do. You could shoot down the ships, or try to speed past them, but any damage taken would drastically reduce your speed, so defeating your opponent is always the best option. The problem is that they move quickly and fire projectiles at you with a manic fervor, requiring you to blast their projectiles with quick reaction times before you are damaged and speed reduced. While this was the most challenging portions of the game, it felt a little off. Piloting was handled automatically, but at random intervals, your ship would jerk to the left and right, messing up your aim in crucial moments. It felt jarring and unhelpful in an already difficult situation.
Once you've finished a trench run, you land on the planet's surface and begin to explore twisting mazes, encountering the Spanish and fighting them off in a shooting gallery-style game akin to something like Lethal Enforcers in the arcade. In each maze are rooms with puzzles and these are easily the weakest segments in the game.
Coktel Vision, a company that developed and produced many adventure games such as Ween: The Prophecy, The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble and the Gobliiins series, is surprisingly not that good with their puzzle design. The clues to solving puzzles are vague and arbitrary, resulting in players clicking on the environment randomly to see what sticks. Like with all adventure games, what is most important is feedback. A player needs to know what is and isn't working and why and this is where Inca falls flat in a big way. They do not offer much feedback to the player, creating a greater difficulty in overcoming the challenges. Most times, a player has to click on the environment in a very specific order in order for them to progress and it is very unclear why it had to be done that way. Regardless, a player can easily brute force through the puzzles thankfully with a little bit of tenacity.
Where the game truly shines though, is just in it's presentation. The idea of space Incans shooting through the cosmos in search of reclaiming the tools they need to restore their civilization is a provocative one. Aguirre as a villain is imposing and relentless in his pursuit of fortune and glory and that blind ambition left me feeling unnerved. Even your asteroid home base is a mix of odd items to interact with. You have a music player, a set of sci-fi pan pipes that you can play, as well as a computer encyclopedia of information about the Inca and their culture.
Inca really is a game that stands out as unique, because it didn't have a rubric to follow in design. It was just a group of people with a wild idea trying to make a game and while it trips up in various moments, it's that massive creativity that pulls you through to the end.