Old game box art, vol. 20

Albion (Blue Byte, 1995)

As far as the game itself goes, it's not a particularly good looking game. You step in the shoes of Tom Discroll, a space pilot of a ship Toronto on its way to planet Albion, which seems like a good candidate for supporting human life. Tom's task is to take a shuttle with a landing party on the surface, but an accident causes him to crash. To his surprise, he wakes up after being nursed to health by cat-like natives of Albion. The previous probes hadn't shown any indications of intelligent life, but here they are and Tom has a mystery in his hands.

Albion is a party-based RPG, played in both 1st person mode, when in dungeons and towns, and from a top-down view when exploring the world. In fact, it does remind me a bit of the old Ultima games, which did something similar.

The box art was done by German artist Dieter Rottermund. There's not much info about him, not in English at least, but I have managed to gather that he is an illustrator, doing stuff for book covers and so on. 

Amberstar (1992) and Ambermoon (1993) by Thalion Software

Back in the day, I had no idea of the existence of Amberstar, but after I saw images of Ambermoon in a review, I always wanted to play it. The problem was, it was an Amiga only release, so as a lowly PC gamer, I had no access to it. 

The games were a part of a proposed trilogy, but as Thalion went under in 1994, the 3rd game fell through the cracks.  I'm tackling these both at the same time, as the cover art for them was done Dieter Rottermund and as such, I actually prefer them over his work on Albion.

In Amberstar, an evil sorcerer is trying to release an evil lord Thornahuun, who was almost defeated a thousand years ago by his son. As luck had it, Thornahuun possessed his son Tak and continued his reign of terror, before he was locked way.  Freeing demons is never a good idea, so a hero is needed to thwart those plans.

Ambermoon takes place several decades after the Amberstar. The world has just begun its recovery from the events that took place in the previous game, but as it happens, a new threat rises its ugly head. The hero of the Amberstar is now an old man who is alarmed by a vision. To find out what's behind it, he summons his grandchild, whom he tasks to seek out the answers.

Technically, both of the games seem to have a similar game style. the worlds are divided into top-down and 1st-person areas for you to explore, the big difference is, that Ambermoon utilizes a 3D engine instead of a 90-degree step view.

I really like the artwork on both of the games, but overall, Amberstar wins for me.