The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time

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The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time
Developer(s)	Presto Studios
Publisher(s)	Sanctuary Woods
Designer(s)	David Flanagan
Platform(s)	Windows, Mac OS
Release date	1995
Genre(s)	Adventure game
Mode(s)	Single player
Rating(s)	ELSPA: 3+ ESRB: K-A RSAC: V2: Humans Killed L1: Mild Expletives
Media	CD-ROM (3)
System requirements	33 MHz 486 DX or faster, Windows 3.1 or later, 8 MB of RAM, 10 MB of Hard Drive space, 640x480 compatible SVGA with 256 colors, 32K high color recommended, Sound Card, 2x CD-ROM drive, Mouse
Input methods	Keyboard, Mouse

The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time is a computer game developed by Presto Studios and is the second game in the Journeyman Project series of computer adventure games.

[edit] Overview

Published in 1995 by Sanctuary Woods, Buried in Time was a radical change from the original. It is noted for establishing Agent 5 (the player's character) as Gage Blackwood, which in the original Journeyman Project lacked basic personality features and even a name. It also featured greatly improved graphics and seamless animation as well as many live-action sequences. The PC version was programmed entirely in C++ for improved performance. A PlayStation version was also prototyped, but never released.

[edit] Story

As the story begins in the year 2318, six months after the events of the first game, Gage Blackwood (once again controlled by the player) is visited by himself from ten years in the future. Someone has framed the future Gage for tampering with historical artifacts and it is up to the past Gage to visit the past and find evidence to clear his name. Meanwhile, the Symbiotry of Peaceful Beings is deliberating on Earth's monopoly on time travel technology and this latest trial threatens to close down the Temporal Security Agency (TSA). After joining up with an interesting artificial intelligence being named Arthur, Gage visits locations such as the workshop of Leonardo da Vinci and the Mayan temple of Chichen Itza and eventually find the culprit, Michelle Visard, who is another TSA agent. Gage is kidnapped by her and taken to an old missile silo, where Arthur sacrifices himself to allow Gage to continue his mission. He eventually uncovers that another alien race, the Krynn, are behind the crimes and the framing of Gage, to further their own interests. Gage is able to stop the Krynn and save his future self, and is then mind-wiped and sent back to his own time.

[edit] Disc layout

The game shipped on three CD-ROMs, with the data organized to allow the least amount of disc-swapping possible. The disc breakup was as follows:

• Disc 1: Farnstein Space Laboratory
• Disc 2: Gage Blackwood's residence, Missile silo, Krynn vessel
• Disc 3: Chateau Gaillard, Leonardo da Vinci's workshop, Chichen Itza

[edit] Publishing

Buried in Time was published by Sanctuary Woods upon its original release. However, Sanctuary Woods soon went out of business, and Presto Studios self-published the game until Red Orb Entertainment picked up the distribution rights in 1998. Red Orb published the game until their eventual demise in 1999.

[edit] Bugs and patches

Buried in Time was not free of its share of bugs, one of the most notable being a glitch near the end of the game that prevented the player from getting a perfect score. This bug and other problems in the initial 1.0 release of the game, including problems running under Windows 95, were solved in a version 1.1 patch. This patch can still be downloaded from the Brøderbund technical support website here

When the game was released as part of The Journeyman Project Trilogy box set, Buried in Time was plagued by a manufacturing error that affected many of the box sets. The disc labeled as disc 2 actually contained the data for disc 3, making the game essentially unplayable. For a time, users could contact Red Orb's technical support department and get a replacement, but this practice has since been discontinued after Red Orb closed down.

[edit] Critical response

The reaction to the game was mostly positive. Just Adventure gave the game an "A+", saying "...this is one of the best games I’ve ever played. It impressed me from start to finish."^[1] Programmer in Black, while having a few gripes about the scoring system, finished his review with "I recommend this (game) highly."^[2]

The game's interface received criticism for being too cluttered and the view window being too small

However, the reaction was not completely positive. The small view window, a potentially cumbersome biochip system, and the overwhelming number of ways the player could meet an untimely end drew criticism from some reviewers, such as Adventure Gamers, who wrote in their three-and-a-half star review: "The first thing you'll invariably notice about the game is its tiny viewscreen...a very disappointing return of windowed gaming...Once again filling up another large portion of the screen is the elaborate interface. The first game's interface walked the fine line between complex and complicated, but the one used in Buried in Time is altogether unwieldy." ^[3]. Most of these problems were solved in the next game in the series, The Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time

[edit] Notes and references

[edit] External links

• The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time at MobyGames
• The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time at the Internet Movie Database
• Archived homepage for Buried in Time