The Collection Chamber: RUMPELSTILTSKIN'S LABYRINTH OF THE LOST

Capture that magical "Once upon a time..." feeling that is forever in your heart with this wondrous interactive fairy tale adventure game!

A classic interactive adventure game filled with drama and intrigue that touches your heart and ignites your imagination. Entrapped by her father's boastful lies, the king unjustly commands the Miller's Daughter to spin straw into gold by dawn - or lose her life. Rumpelstiltskin mysteriously appears to demand a price and raise a challenge - Conquer the Labyrinth of the Lost and you may keep your life and your child!

The Labyrinth of the Lost yields its mysteries only to those with the will and wisdom to uncover its mysteries. You must draw on all your worldly knowledge to onquer the ever changing maze and discover the magical Keys, mysterious Orbs and challenging Oracles. You can set the level of play so that it is fun and challenging for everyone.

You will be entertained as never before with this totally captivating adventure game of the courageous Miller's Daughter and the devious Rumpelstiltskin.
Ever changing maze and intriguing gameplay.
Dazzling animation scenes that will keep the entire family enthralled.
Enchanting original songs and music that totally immerse you in this game of life and death.
Mysterious questions to challenge your worldly knowledge.
Drama and realism of a feature film to enthrall and excite you.

~ from the back of the box

There aren't many fairy tales that haven't been adapted by Disney, and that leaves other studios to plug in the hole with arguably less than stellar results. The amount of aggravating princess movies in the 90s was astounding (Thumbelina haunts me to this day). In 1995, Illinois-based developers TerraGlyph released a series of animated educational titles that were heavily influenced by the house of mouse. The hand-drawn cel animation was created in-house at their Irish studios (who would eventually turn their hand to movies such as Help! I'm a Fish) and was actually quite impressive for the time. Enough for the team to eventually work with Disney themselves on a couple of their Activity Centres (102 Dalmatians & Little Mermaid II).

Rumpelstiltskin's Labyrinth of the Lost was TerraGlyph's second title after testing the water with Hansel & Gretel, and to begin with it seems to follow the same formula as an Animated Storybook. Story scenes play out in front of hand-drawn backgrounds which are filled with random hotspots that reveal tiny skits and asides. What's different here is that some of them can be triggered while the story scenes are playing out, which is a nice touch.

The miller's daughter bursting into her "I Want" song (left).

Naturally, there has to be a villain song too. You can click on parts of the background during this one (right).

True to the Brothers Grimm tale, the miller has been caught bragging about his beautiful daughter. Claims that she can spin straw into gold reaches the highest offices of the land and both he and his daughter have been summoned by the King to prove the fibs true. The miller's daughter is locked in a tower with a bunch of straw and ordered to spin in into gold before the morning. Failure would mean death! In true Disney fashion, our heroine sings an anguished "I Want" song before the titular magical imp shows up to offer her a way out.

Up until now - about 10 minutes of gameplay - it's solely been a re-telling of the story, but Rumpelstiltskin throws us a curve ball. Instead of demanding the girl's necklace in payment, he tasks her with finding one in a magical maze. This is the rest of the game, and can take quite some time to navigate. It is filled with multiple choice questions behind which an orb can be found. Collect three and return them to the maze's entrance and you will be able to collect the item the imp desires.

Click on the bottom left of the screen to access the menu. Changing the difficulty to Hard is a must (left).
Click on our heroine to open up her bag and see how many keys and orbs she's collected (right).

On the easiest difficulty it's not more complicated than that. Questions rarely rise above primary school level and the maze itself isn't that grand so getting lost won't be much of a big deal. You can even turn off the questions so it's only the orbs you'll be hunting. I doubt anyone wouldn't be able to solve it in the six in-game hours given to you.

Things ramp up considerably on the hard difficulty. Coloured keys are now required to access the questions in each room. They are found randomly around the map or collected after solving simple puzzles. Be aware that should you get the question wrong, the key will disappear and you will have to find it again. That's not all! Old Rumpey himself stalks the halls and will randomly steal keys from your possession. And that's not to mention the much larger and deliberately designed maze that needs to be mapped out if you want to be successful.

These aren't the orbs you're looking for, but pick the right one and you might be rewarded with a key (left).
Bring all three of the right orbs to a select room to solve the maze and move on with the story (right).

I actually found myself struggling at times on the hard difficulty, which is not something I expected from such a game obviously aimed at young kids. The questions went from "What two colours combined make the colour orange?" to "Who was the first man to walk in space?" (an it's not Neil Armstrong). Even if you get it right, it's no guarantee that you'll be rewarded with an orb. You'll be hearing Mr. Stiltskin recite "this may seem unfair, but the orb is elsewhere..." so many times it will haunt your nightmares.

And it's in this labyrinth where Rumpelstiltskin's Labyrinth of the Lost loses me. It is slow, repetitive, and not engaging at all. I suspect even a five-year-old will tire of looking at the same room over and over again. Despite a nice presentation and an acceptable animation style, the gameplay portions of this game simply bore me. I should've picked Hansel & Gretel and the Enchanted Castle instead. I hear it's the better game.

To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses the DOSBox-X build of DOSBox to bring the game to modern systems. Manual included. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 10.

File Size: 127 Mb. Install Size: 229 Mb. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

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