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The Omega Stone, the sequel to Riddle of the Sphinx, will send you to multiple locations to discover a secret that links ancient civilizations. You'll visit the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, Celtic locations like Stonehenge, the waters of Devil's Triangle, the Moi of Easter Island, the ruins of Atlantis, and more of the Sphinx itself. The Adventure Company claims the game will provide about 50 hours of gameplay, although your actual playing time will of course vary depending on your puzzle-solving abilities.

The sequel will also be replacing the first game's Myst-like mix of static graphics and Quicktime VR animations with DreamCatcher's usual "Phoenix" engine. If the Phoenix name isn't familiar to you, you still may have seen it in many of DreamCatcher's other first-person games that allow 360-degree rotation, like the Dracula series or Secret at Loch Ness. The graphics in this game so far do seem sharper than in similar Phoenix-based titles, although they're still not quite as sharp as most purely stationary images. Expect The Omega Stone in stores this winter.

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The Adventure Company's other sequel due out this winter is Pharaoh's Curse, the follow-up to the first Cameron Files adventure, Secret at Loch Ness. This title sends you to Egypt to find a missing mummy supposedly awoken by an ancient ritual, and you'll also investigate a kidnapping and travel down the Nile by steamboat. All of this adventure is again provided courtesy of the Phoenix engine.

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The Adventure Company is also releasing two adventures based on slightly more obscure licenses. Curse of Atlantis: Thorgal's Quest is based on the French comic book character Thorgal, a 7th-century Viking. (However, they're not pushing the comic book tie-in here in North America, for obvious reasons.) In this adventure, Thorgal meets an old man who shows him his own future, in which Thorgal is about to kill his son. He must travel through time and space to fight both Norse gods and mere mortals to try to prevent this future and save his son. Thorgal is described as a blend of action and adventure, somewhat similar to the Arthur's Knights games, and is due out this fall.

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Their other licensed-based title is an action/adventure Auryn Quest, based on the novel The Neverending Story. Unlike The Adventure Company's more traditional adventures, this game will primarily feature arcade-style puzzles, complete with a first-person 3D interface. The graphics aren't up to the technical standards of cutting-edge first-person shooters, but the environments themselves look like they might be interesting, and Auryn Quest should still run on a 450 MHz Pentium II.

Auryn's primarily appeal seems to be for fans of The Neverending Story, who could tell you how the magic Auryn that you must find in the game ties into the original novel. The game is currently set for a July 2002 release.

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