Immortals follows the pattern of most modern graphic-adventure games. You control Rhodan by pointing to a spot in the scene and clicking the left mouse button. The shape of your cursor changes when it finds items that can be picked up or manipulated, or when it locates doorways leading to other scenes. Inventory items are placed in a strip along the bottom of the screen as they are collected. Some of these items must be combined with others to solve certain puzzles during the game; this is accomplished by dragging one item to the other and left-clicking them to fuse them together. Rhodan lets you know if you try to combine the wrong items, or if you try to get him to do things he can’t do.

During your journey through Immortals, you discover an interesting collection of unique characters. The dean of a major technology school has lost most of his body in an explosion; his remains, including his brain, now exist in a regeneration tank. You encounter a race known as the Yulziish, who feature blue fur and plate-shaped heads with two pairs of eyes, and another race called the Unithers, which are human-sized creatures with elephant-like trunks on their faces. All of these beings have significant information for you to use in your quest.

Immortals installs easily and quickly, and has system requirements low enough that it will play on almost any PC configuration; I maxed out all available graphics options, even 32x antialiasing, and still managed to maintain 25 frames per second all the way through the game. There is no printed manual in the package, which will aggravate some players, but a detailed PDF manual is included on the install DVD. An introductory cut scene leads to the game’s main menu, which offers the standard options and is easy to understand and navigate. Your progress through the adventure can be saved at any time, with autosaves occurring automatically at important points.

The first half of 2008 has seen the release of a number of significant adventure games, featuring major characters in world literature. Does Immortals of Terra live up to the 47-year heritage of its source material, or is it just another point-and-click potboiler? On to the numbers…