Interview by slydos, 10th November 2000

Genesis is a new freelance adventure game from german developers MAAW Multimedia. Following information was given to me by Andreas Weiler, one of the two guys behind it:

GENESIS has all classic elements of the genre, like an option menu, inventory control, dialogues, avis, soundeffects, 34 music themes, three dozens of challenging puzzles and about 3000 graphics. These condiments are coming with a dense and logically co-ordinated plot, that takes place at 22 different locations with more sub-locations on all continents on earth and also distant planets.

Dialogues with other characters are partly direct but sometimes are led with the help of chat-rooms.

Partially there are puzzles, but there are also other kind of riddles, like a chess-problem. Difficulty ranges from easy to very difficult. But if you watch closely, use your logic, recognize connections and transpose yourself into characters or situations all tasks are solvable. You can also combine objects within the inventory.

We hope, that the extensive explorations, which are necessary to put all clues together, will provide the amazed gamer with around 60 hours of gameplay.

The young archeologist Curtis Mulligan by coincidence discovers the traces of an ancient alien culture and finds evidence for the existence of three abandoned bastions of this civilisation. He tries to get access to this stations and perhaps will be successful with his efforts. Further progressing our protagonist explores the relics of the aliens and finds extensive information to lighten up the story of human evolution Eventually our hero lands on Mars, where he suddenly and unexpectedly becomes the centre point of a trial, making himself the mentor of mankind. He learns about the historical evolution of a race, that can be called the ancestors of our civilisation.

During the 3 years and ca. 9000 hours of work we were led by two ideas: On the one hand we wanted to prove that phantasy and creativity win recognition without hard- and software employment that would cost hundreds of thousands. On the other hand we wanted to create a game that brings a bit of light and beauty into the fan's every day life.
GENESIS was finished 6 weeks ago. The whole game was developed by two people, which means story, graphics, avis, program control, music, dialogues etc.. 4 Music themes were especially composed by other enthusiasts.

We ourselves have played around 200 adventure games. Over and over again we found partially illogical stories and contexts so that we tried to write a story without this shortcoming. As we are no fans of violence or action games, in this game no one has to die (at least not as you usually would suppose). But this doesn't mean that the ending of the game is always the same. Only the one who stands the test and is acting right will reach the final aim.

You can save the game at any time. The only restriction is that there are only 8 possible savegames. From a certain point of time the player can't save anymore. Here an automated save function will appear, not to take the gamer by surprise.

850 MB are required as free space on hard disk. It's not possible to play from CD-ROM because a high amount of data transfer is necessary, that would cause problems with slower CD drives. But with todays systems and prizes of hardware this will be no problem I think.

"Genesis" comes with 1 CD-ROM in a Jewelcase with a booklet and description concerning installation and game controls. Game controls are very easy, because we think the gamer should concentrate more on gaming than studying instructions. "Genesis" is totally mouse driven.

A sequel is planned and the story is already finished in our minds. But it depends a bit on how much the market is pleased, because next time we will have to change to DirectX. This requires a game-engine and different software, which is not cheap. We sure would like to settle in the gaming branch, but at the moment we are working on the game after our normal jobs in our spare time and have to bankroll the project by ourselves. So it's not that easy and will take some time.

We can only offer a sales price for "Genesis" of DM 39,90  because we distribute it by ourselves without wholesaler etc.. A walkthrough is also available and could be bought through our website.

We would like to produce an English version, but that also depends on the sales of the German version.