The Journeyman Project 1: Pegasus Prime

it's a older game i have not played since I was a kid but i love playing it. it has a good story line and does take some getting used to the controls. i also find it fun.

Always loved Journeyman Project. Would be AMAZING to get the second or third installment :)

The Journeyman Project is my favourite series of games. My adventure started with Journeyman Project Turbo on the Mac, and throughout my childhood I played the entire trilogy repeatedly.

When this game released on GoG and Steam, I eagerly jumped in with high expectations, because I'd always been fascinated by a trailer for 'JMP: Director's Cut' which came on my Buried in Time CD. Pegasus Prime met my high expectations! I'd suggest the game to anyone who's a fan of classic point-n-clicks like Myst.

The gameplay is about hunting down clues, completing puzzles, and resolving the issues caused by malevolent robots across various time-zones. The time-travel story is the main draw here, with interesting theories on how time-travel would work, concepts for technological future environments (like a Mars colony), and a trail of clues leading the player to discover the mastermind behind the interfering robots.

The story is more fleshed out compared to Turbo, and the presentation is on the same level as Buried in Time. The environments are so much more alive, the ambient tracks add much-needed atmosphere, and the puzzles are improved. I'd say Pegasus Prime & Turbo have differing appeal for me - I still enjoy Turbo a lot and wish it were available on modern platforms as well (though I'm able to emulate my copy using SheepShaver).

I have much love for this oft-forgotten series, and I'm eager to see if the other two games are also polished up & released on Steam someday.

The Journeyman Project is the kind of unforgiving that characterized a lot of early generation CD games - not because its creators were sadists (necessarily) but because forgiving gameplay actually relies on a ton of features and functionality that would have cost important disk space. One of the features you'll miss most when playing this game is autosave, because when you make any kind of a mistake, this game will kill you dead, game over.

Fortunately, this is not a game where you can make a wrong move 50 steps back and then only realize you have to pay for it later [*cough most Soulslike narrative structure cough*]. You pay for mistakes almost immediately. Walk into an elevator shaft? Shouldn't have done that - dead. Pissed off the wrong robot? Shouldn't have done that - dead. This means that while there are puzzles where you'll bang your head against the screen, you'll never actually be in a position where you are trapped. In fact, part of the fun of the game is understanding why you're not trapped and working around an apparent limitation.

The puzzles hold up even decades later. They're not astounding or brain-melting in the category of, say, the Witness, but they're good fun and many get solved after careful exploration. If you're OK with the clearly dated HUD, writing, acting, and speed, this is a fun afternoon of play. Worth jumping into.