Robinson's Requiem

Did You Know?

• The game's 3D landscapes used texture-mapped voxels, similar to NovaLogic's Comanche and its Voxel Space engine.
• A sequel, Deus, was released in December 1996 only on PC.

Gameplay

Robinson's Requiem is a survival simulation game played from a first-person perspective. The player controls Trepliev 1, whose goal is to escape the prison planet Zarathustra with Nina1. The game requires monitoring hunger, thirst, fatigue, temperature, and health via a dedicated screen, and performing tasks such as eating, drinking, sleeping, hunting, cooking, gathering, and finding shelter. A freely movable mouse cursor interacts with the environment and an icon-based HUD, except during combat.

Development

Robinson's Requiem was developed alongside Ishar 3: The Seven Gates of Infinity using Silmarils' ALIS game engine, created by co-founder Louis-Marie Rocques to ease porting from the Atari ST. The project was headed by co-founder André Rocques, who also programmed with Louis-Marie Rocques, Jean-François Trevien, and composer Fabrice Hautecloque. Artists included Christophe Lambert, Eric Galand, Guillaume Maginot, Nicolas Meylaender, and Pascal Einsweiler. The 3D landscapes used texture-mapped voxels with pre-calculated elevation values and special effects; sprites were pre-rendered in 3D Studio. David Ingels ported the game to the 3DO, and Cyril Cogordan handled the Atari Jaguar CD and Macintosh versions, both converting voxel visuals to polygon rendering.

Release and ports

Robinson's Requiem was originally published by Silmarils in Europe for the Atari ST, Atari Falcon, and Amiga in 1994. The Atari Falcon version came on diskettes and CD-ROM, the latter including full motion video cutscenes. Later PC and Macintosh ports by ReadySoft and Daze Marketing featured minimal changes. The 3DO version, announced for February 1995 but delayed until 1996, was released only in North America and used polygon visuals instead of voxels. The Atari Jaguar CD port was announced in late 1994, completed and sent to Atari Corporation for approval, but never commercially released due to Atari's closure; it was later distributed by Songbird Productions on 30 May 2011. A planned Amiga CD32 version was never released for unknown reasons.

Reception

Critical reception of Robinson's Requiem was mixed. Reviewers for CU Amiga and Amiga Computing praised its originality despite criticizing its graphics and high system requirements. CU Amiga's Tony Dillon liked the freeform item combination system but was disappointed by the Amiga version's graphics and performance. Jonathan Maddock of Amiga Computing called it an entirely new gaming experience. Amiga Format's Dale Bradford enjoyed the non-linear exploration and survival. All three noted the high difficulty. However, Amiga Power's Rich Pelley found the game extremely boring, comparing it to painting a long fence, and criticized its graphics and performance. PC Gamer UK and PC Gamer US also gave poor reviews, citing frustration and uninviting graphics.