Even if you haven't heard of Arxel Tribe before, you may recognize their games, including Ring, Faust (published by DreamCatcher as Seven Games of the Soul), and Louvre (The Messenger). Arxel Tribe will start publishing its own games in Europe, although they will still rely on third-party publishers in the United States. As of this writing, they haven't named an American publisher for their newest games, but it's likely they will find one soon.

Both Hitchcock: The Final Cut and Casanova: The Duel of the Black Rose will also bring a new engine to Arxel Tribe's games, moving away from 360-degree panaromas to a combination of real-time 3D character graphics and pre-rendered background graphics.

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Hitchcock appears to be one of the more innovative adventures I've seen in a while. Licensed adventures often (but not always) end up disappointing gamers in one of two ways: they follow their source material so closely that fans find little surprise in the game and non-fans have no reason to play, or they ignore the source material so much that the license becomes little more than a marketing tool.

However, the design of Hitchcock will allow Arxel Tribe to work Hitchcock's films and other parts of his life into an original story, providing something for fans and non-fans alike. Your character, a private detective named Joseph Shamley, has had psychic abilities since his parents were killed in a car crash on the same day as Hitchcock's funeral.

When he's brought onto the case of a series of murders and disappearances on a film set, Joseph's usual visions are replaced by clips from Hitchcock's films, using a total of 15 minutes of footage. Other references to Hitchcock will be scattered throughout the game -- like a mynah bird named Alfred or a chase scene set in a field of tulips, something that Hitchcock had always wanted to film but never did. Since these references are only part of the larger story, the game should remain accessible to people who aren't familiar with Hitchcock's work.

Similarly, the game's puzzles should be within reach of novice gamers. Only about 10% of the puzzles will be the traditional sort of adventure puzzles, with most of the game focusing on suspense-oriented action like car chases, questioning of suspects, and organizing of the evidence. If the player becomes stuck, in-game hints will appear in the form of psychic visions. Hopefully, these hints won't interrupt players who still want to work on the puzzles on their own.

To provide some incentive for solving puzzles, Hitchcock will give more detail to those who take the time to organize the available evidence, although the basic story will always remain the same. This system should also add some replay value, since players may be able to see more on playing the game a second time.

As if the cut-scenes and other references weren't enough, Hitchcock also uses its license and the general theme to add some other interesting twists to the standard adventure formula. Some conversations have you engaging in free association to question a character or using sound effects to provoke responses, instead of just selecting topics or questions from a dialogue tree. The murders themselves also relate to a specific theme -- for example, in the "broadcasting" murder, one victim dies just by watching a film. (I'll leave the details of how that happens for the game itself.)

It's really quite clear that the developers at Arxel Tribe are big Hitchcock fans, and they appear to have used the Hitchcock license in a way that will appeal to many. The European release on PC and Mac is scheduled for Fall 2001, and with Universal Studios providing extensive marketing for this title, Arxel should have no trouble finding an American publisher.

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Arxel Tribe's other upcoming game is Casanova, an action/adventure game set in 18th-century Venice. The game is intended as a light-hearted swashbuckling story, so some amount of dueling will be critical, but the action is aimed at the novice gamer and looks to be fairly simple to control.

Insuring that it lives up to its "Casanova" name, the game will also feature a number of seduction sequences, where the player must talk to the women of Venice's houses to improve his standing in society. Between the fencing and the seduction plus some more traditional puzzle-solving, your character will work to solve his mother's murder and uncover a plot against the city's government.

And as one would expect, Casanova also attempts to recreate all of the important historical locations in Venice. You can see the results in some of the screenshots. While I can't speak too much for the accuracy of the recreations, the graphics do look quite realistic. Casanova is due out in Europe for the PC in June 2001, and a Mac release is planned as well.

It will be interesting to see where Arxel Tribe goes from here. Both of their upcoming games promise to bring some interesting forms of interaction into the adventure genre, while still keeping the graphics and story that one traditionally expects from adventures. Arxel should also continue introducing current technology into future games, but they plan to do so only when it suits their games and their talents.