You know you are about to experience something special when the intro movie of a game bursts into an early 90s pop/rock song. Especially, when it happens after a monologue spoken in Incan and has panflutes and all that jazz piping to your ears. It drips cheese in so vast quantities, that I was afraid it would clog the fans inside my laptop. Did I mention that the song has vocals as well? You know what, before you read any further, just go to Youtube and thank me later.
Having that earworm slithering on your eardrums, you are now well prepared for this peculiar tale of space Spaniards after the gold of the Incas. You take the role of El Dorado, the potential chosen one, who is tasked with finding three sacred objects, jewels, presenting time, matter and energy. Huayna Capac, the last of the great Incas, has seen a premonition of Spaniards invading their kingdom. To prevent this, he has decided to call forth the legendary hero El Dorado o take care of things, thus sending you to a mission on which the fate of the Incas depends.
The very first thing to do is to jump in the controls of El Dorado's space vessel, a golden ship Tumi. This takes you to the first space mission, where you have to shoot and dodge asteroids on your way to a planet, where you enter trenches guarded by the fighter ships of Aguirre, the leader of the invading Spanish forces. It's basically a race, in which you have to destroy 4 enemy ships before they reach the end of the trench, otherwise, you'll die and lose one of your 6-lives. After the trench run, you finally get to the first temple, where you are challenged by a couple of puzzles as well as a 1st person maze filled with Aguirre's men, whom you have to fight along the way.
And that's pretty much the whole gameplay in a nutshell, though during getting the rest of the gems, you do space combat against the Spanish ships instead of dodging asteroids. I wouldn't call the system a space simulator, it's nowhere near as complex, but it is a very rudimentary space shooter if nothing else.
After getting all three gems, you finally face Aguirre in his ship. The style is similar to other 1st person exploration bits the game has: you move in the maze, where the first task is to take care of Aguirre's men, after which he attacks you personally. Some simplistic shooting later, the evil Spaniard is defeated and thus you prove to be the prophesied hero El Dorado, the golden champion of the Incan people.
Inca is a kind of a mixture of different genres. It has elements from space simulators, some rudimentary 1st person shooting, 1st person maze exploration and some light puzzle/adventure game elements. It kind of tries to be a lot and surprisingly enough, it manages to do quite well. It's not masterful at any of the elements it has, but it does work well enough to be entertaining. I mean, even the mazes feature a map system, that shows your location as well as in what direction you are going, making the many mazes of the game quite feasible instead of annoying roadblocks.
During space combat, you get to navigate the space with a help of two radars, for front and rear, allowing you to keep tabs on where the enemy swarms are. While the amount of weapons is limited, you do have missiles alongside the energy guns. In general, these battles are quite snappy and the ship controls reasonably well.
The 1st person exploration is just what it sounds like. The location is shown in a 1st-person view. At times, it's just the one screen, where you have to solve a puzzle blocking your progress. After you solve the puzzle, you are usually taken to a maze, where your movements are shown in animated transitions. Each is recorded on the map, which shows all the exits in the room, making the exploration a relatively simple process. The biggest obstacle is the enemies in the maze, but their numbers are limited and it's possible to kill them all before you leave. It's not necessary to do so, but you can, if you so choose.
The biggest flaw of Inca is the save system, or lack of it, to be more precise. Instead of saving, you are given a password after completing each level. This, I believe, comes from the fact that it is more of an action game instead of an adventure game. Still, it's a somewhat annoying system, especially because it provides the passwords with the information on how many times you've died, so if you've died multiple times during the various battle levels, it's quite possible to reach the end phase with only one life left, which just means you have to load the game more often with the passwords, which are 8 numbers long.
I was fully expecting to dislike Inca. On paper, it sounds like just the kind of a retro game I'd have a hard time warming to, but instead of completely outdated clumsiness, it manages to serve a surprisingly competent game, that is also pretty fun to play. The story and the setting do come out as new-age mumbo jumbo on more than one occasion, but it also makes the whole experience all the more charming. It should be an entertaining play if you manage to find it from somewhere.
Sadly enough, like with most Coktel Vision games, Inca is not available as a digital version through any store I know of. So, if you want it, there's either unofficial sources or sourcing eBay for a copy. If you manage to find it at a decent price, it's well worth a fiver or so.
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