The Cassandra Galleries

The Cassandra Galleries is a 1997 puzzle adventure video game developed by Kutoka Interactive and published by Corel. It was Kutoka’s first video game; the Montreal-based company had previously focused on educational software. The game received mixed reviews and is now rare on the secondhand market. Players take on the role of an appraiser who must evaluate the mansion of the Cassandra family after wealthy media mogul William Cassandra and his daughter Maya vanished without explanation. The estate is slated to become an art gallery. The player explores the mansion’s rooms and galleries, interacting with former staff members who provide clues. The game uses a point-and-click interface to find hidden objects and environmental hints. The main objective is to collect sculptures from the mansion’s studio and place them in seven galleries, each themed after a historical art movement (such as Romanticism, Art Deco, and Modernism). The mansion is a surreal first-person 3D environment. After placing an artifact, the player is teleported to a stylized universe matching the art movement, where further puzzles must be solved to unlock clues. There are 49 puzzles in total, including word games, sound-guessing games, and matching games. The game was conceived by Kutoka founder Richard Vincent, who began development in 1994. Full production started in 1996, but the schedule was cut from ten months to six to meet a Christmas 1996 release. Principal photography for the full-motion video clips was still underway by September 1996. Vincent described the project as a shoestring-budget challenge, noting that many crew members were hired from outside industries because experienced talent was hard to find. An unfinished version was shown at E3 in Los Angeles in May 1996, after which Corel—an Ontario-based software company—provided funding and agreed to publish and distribute the game. The content required two CD-ROMs, making for a large install size at the time. Corel advertised over 40 hours of gameplay. The game was developed for both Mac OS and Microsoft Windows, with the discs usable on both platforms. Kutoka missed the Christmas 1996 deadline; *The Cassandra Galleries* was released in March 1997. It sold poorly and is now rare.