Doralice finds herself from a peculiar pickle when she wakes up from a hold of a slave ship. One thing making his pickle more peculiar and baffling is, that moments prior to her awakening, she was in the year 1992. That's a long way from a ship hold around the 1980s.
Like a good adventure game protagonist she is, Doralice isn't gonna mope of the situation. She begins proactively searching her surroundings for clues and means of escaping her situation and this is when she finds Yoruba, a shackled black man, whom she promises to rescue as well. The next person she finds is Melkior, shackled up as well, but this man instantly figures the true origins of Doralice, as he is a time agent. This prompts a flashback, or is it a flashforward, sequence, in 1992, allowing you to play through the segments ending up in Doralice's unexpected time warp.
A lawyer had sent a letter to Doralice, asking her to come to the manor de la Pruneliere, left to her by a dead, distant relative. Instead of a lawyer, the only thing she found was a notice, where the lawyer stated, that he was on his way to get the police. He suspected smugglers had taken refuge in Doralice's new home. The inquisitive woman doesn't let small things like a threat of criminals stand in her way and proceeds to enter the premises to see what her new house is like. And maybe apprehend the smugglers as well. I don't think she was giving too much thought to the possibility of getting caught by the smugglers.
Some adventure game puzzles later, Doralice finds herself from a shipwreck near the house. From there, she finds a chest holding an ancient sarcophagus. An interruption by the obvious baddie of the story follows when she meets Jarlath, who has done time-travelling of his own after stealing precious and rare McGuffins from the future. The stuff was hidden in the sarcophagus and he can't have Doralice meddling in his affairs. Jarlath makes a time jump, taking the nosey woman with him.
Back in 1840, Doralice has to escape the ship and take Yoruba and Melkior with her. They devise a quick plan, which includes Doralice getting caught in order to get access to the captain's cabin. Luckily, after getting caught, the ship seems almost deserted and she has a free run of the place. More rummaging later, she, Melkior and Yoruba escape the ship, but Yoruba is injured and needs medical aid. Oh, before I forget, the reason Yoruba is involved in the whole thing is, that he had relations with Jarlaths back in time wife and sired a child with her. Not the Jarlath seems to mind that much about it, as it wasn't a love marriage, just means to an end.
What follows next felt like the point where the devs ran out of budget, as the last part of the game seems a bit rushed. Doralice runs around the island of St. Cristobald they escaped to, seeks help from two different shamans and finally confronts Jarleth only to kill him with a tropical flower, as he has severe allergies. Que back to the future where it all ends with a wink: "You were only dreaming, wink, wink, wink". And that happens quite literally when the lawyer turns out to be Melkior.
The last part is also the only place where you can actually die in the game and there are no warnings of it, so it's recommended that you save often there. It's really an odd design choice, as other than a couple of places at the end, there's no element of death anywhere else in the game. You'd think that with death being a possibility, making the ship more hazardous would have made more sense. But no, dying is a surprise addition saved for the last part of the game.
There are two versions of the game, a floppy disk and a CD-ROM. The biggest difference is, that the CD version has somewhat better quality animations, CD audio music and voice acting. All things considered, the CD version is far superior to the floppy version, so I'd recommend going with that. Considering the age of the game, the voice acting is surprisingly good. Not that there is a lot of it, but there are far worse examples from the era. The CD music is pretty decent as well. And, for what it is worth, the disk version was originally released in two parts, whereas the CD has both parts of the game in one package. So, if you go out looking for an original copy, you might stumble upon two disk releases, Lost in Time 1 and 2, or alternatively a collection with both of them. The CD version can also sport a text containing both of the games.
Lost in Time is a rather typical 1st person adventure for the 1990s. The world is built from pre-rendered and drawn scenes, shown from the 1st-person view of Doralice. Some scenes are accompanied by transition animations between different points of interest. This does add to the uneven feel of the game, the pirate ship is the only place with these 3D animations, as it is the only place presented in pre-rendered 3D. The final island has hand-drawn art and the mansion is based on photographs. Graphically, Lost in Time is a bit of a mishmash and the different locations look like they belong in entirely different games.
The biggest issues I have with LiT comes from the art direction and from how the story is constructed. Considering the time the game was made, I do understand why Coketel didn't do the nature scenes in 3D, but it is a bit odd, that they opted to do the final island in drawn art instead of using photos. Now, the game has three different kinds of art direction, which hardly fit in together.
As for the story, it's more or less exactly the kind of a b-adventure you'd imagine from the plot description. It could be much better, even as a b-adventure, as it does have elements in it rarely seen in games, at least for the time it was made in. The story just never bothers to iterate what it has further than mere surface. The finale at the island is definitely the weakest part of the whole thing and not only because of how different it looks. It flat out feels rushed.
This lighter story might be a conscious decision on the part of Muriel Tramis, as her previous titles had revolved around slavery and female sexuality. Neither of the subject matters is commonly present in modern mainstream games, not in a serious manner at least. For the time, they were even rarer. Perhaps she just wanted to design something lighter or perhaps she wanted to go further, but the tech just wasn't all there yet.
I wouldn't call LiT a hard game. The puzzles, despite some of them being somewhat illogical, are easy, mostly because there aren't that many locations, so even if you are stuck, you can just try everything on everything. Perhaps the biggest obstacle comes from trying to find all the hotspots hiding the items you need.
Lost in Time isn't a classic, far from it. But it is fun enough to warrant a playthrough if you manage to find it from somewhere. As it isn't sold anywhere, finding it might be hard and it definitely isn't worth paying too much if you do see a physical copy of it. But for a buck or two, it's worth it. It's also fully playable in ScummVM, so if you do get it, getting it to run should be easy enough.
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