Adventure Game Geek has a ball exploring the real (neverending) story of Auryn Quest

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Features by Adventure Game Hotspot
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Auryn Quest is not your typical adventure game. In fact, it’s not really an adventure game at all, even though it was published by DreamCatcher Interactive, who put out a plethora of adventure games such as The Crystal Key and Riddle of the Sphinx. As you already know if you’ve watched The Neverending Story or read the book by Michael Ende, the Auryn is a magical talisman that protects the wearer from evil. The story takes place in Fantasia, which is the world of human imagination, but it’s in danger of being destroyed by the Nothing, which is created when people cease to believe. You’d expect the game to follow in the footsteps of the book and film, but fate didn’t work out that way…

This is the only game to be developed by Discreet Monsters, a German company that set about creating what was originally called The Real Neverending Story, and was going to be in three parts. They had ambitious plans to make an action-adventure with a complex dialogue system and characters that reacted differently based on the player's decisions and reputation. Unfortunately, development costs became too high and Discreet Monsters went bankrupt, so The Real Neverending Story was never released. But some of the development team got together and salvaged what they could from what had been done so far, and thus Auryn Quest was born, no longer a complex action-adventure but a jump 'n' run platformer that is sadly just a shadow of its original vision.

In Auryn Quest you are the chosen one, destined to recover the sacred Auryn that has been stolen and save Fantasia! How do we do this? By collecting balls, of course! There are four different worlds we can enter, and it’s our mission to collect a total of ten energy balls in each world. Don’t worry if you forget what you’re doing, though, as you’ll meet some inhabitants of Fantasia on the way who love to remind you to grab all your balls. Adventure Game Geek got fellow network member OneShortEye involved and asked if he’d like to try speedrunning the game. After giving it a go, OSE decided to watch the movie instead and drown his sorrows in that one scene that has traumatized so many for the rest of their lives… RIP Artex.

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