| Elvira II: The Jaws of Cerberus | |
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| Developer(s) | Horrorsoft[1] |
| Publisher(s) | Accolade |
| Platform(s) | Amiga, Atari ST, C64 and IBM PC |
| Release date(s) | 1992 for IBM PC, Atari ST and Amiga |
| Genre(s) | Horror; RPG/adventure game; point and click |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
| Media | 5 CD-ROM(s), 7 floppy disk(s) |
| Input methods | Keyboard, mouse |
Elvira II: The Jaws of Cerberus is the second game in the Elvira series. It was produced by Horrorsoft and published by Accolade in 1992. It is a sequel to Elvira: Mistress of the Dark.
The game was followed by Waxworks, which can be considered its spiritual sequel.
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The main character is Elvira's boyfriend, whose mission is to save Elvira, captured by the demon Cerberus who wants to use her magical power for his own aims. The player seeks Elvira in a horror movie studio where the props and movie sets have turned into actual monstrosities, apparently as a result of building the studio on haunted grounds.
Gameplay in Elvira II takes place in first-person perspective. The player can move forward and backward, or turn right, left or back by clicking on one of the arrows in the bottom-left corner of the screen. Rather than being truly 3D, the game simulates the player's view by using a large amount of 2D images which depict the rooms and corridors from various spots and angles; due to this, the player's freedom is somewhat limited - in many rooms, it's impossible to look to the side, for example.
Out of the four areas in the game (the main studio building and the three movie sets), two of them (main building and Studio 2 - the haunted house) have more adventure elements, focusing mainly on collecting useful items and problem-solving, while Studio 1 and 3 - set in insect-filled caverns and a dungeon, respectively - are similar to a classic dungeon crawl.
The Magic System was unique at the time as the player could cast Magic Spells using the items found around the studio (which meant that the game was very much a loot and explore type game.) The recipe for the spell indicated what sort of item would be required in order to cast it (a glass item, or an inflammable item for example) and the player would have to come up with an item matching that description. In the examples given the glass object could be anything from a glass bottle to a glass ashtray, whilst the inflammable object would be a fire extinguisher. The game's makers Horror Soft (a subsidiary of Adventure Soft) used the wrong meaning of inflammable as it means any object that can be set alight, however the writers took inflammable to mean any object that CAN'T be set alight. (See Inflammable)
The game was reviewed in 1992 in Dragon #180 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 5 out of 5 stars.[2]
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