Lure of the Temptress is a point-and-click adventure game published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment in June 1992 for Atari ST, MS-DOS, and Amiga. It was the first game developed by Revolution Software and uses their proprietary Virtual Theatre engine. The player assumes the role of Diermot, a young peasant who has to overthrow an evil sorceress. The game was well-received and re-released as freeware on April 1, 2003.
Gameplay
Lure of the Temptress is a 2D adventure game played from a third-person perspective. Via a point-and-click interface and a system of drop-down lists, the player guides protagonist Diermot through the game's world and interacts with the environment by selecting from multiple commands.
The player controls Diermot's movements and actions with a mouse or a gamepad. Cecil wanted the game to differ from popular Sierra games at the time, saying: "While I enjoyed Sierra games, I felt that there had to be more than yet again saving King Graham of Daventry from a – let’s be frank – fairly unlikely series of events. It was all a little bit twee. So we came up with the idea of writing an adventure game that did not take itself too seriously, but did have a serious story – something in-between Lucasarts and Sierra."
Lure of the Temptress was the first game built with the Virtual Theatre engine, which allowed in-game characters to wander around the gameworld independently of each other, performing "every day life" actions, which had not previously been featured in a game. It was later used for Beneath a Steel Sky and the first two games in the Broken Sword series. The title cost between 20 and 30 thousand pounds.
On April 1, 2003, the game was released as freeware. The data files are available from the Revolution Software website for download This version of Lure of the Temptress was released on GOG.com on December 18, 2008.
Reception
Upon its release, Lure of the Temptress was received favorably by critics, who praised the game's innovative controls and graphics, and compared it to Sierra and LucasFilm games. In 1993, Dragon gave the game 4 out of 5 stars. Computer Gaming World liked the game's sophisticated NPC interactions and how it prevented unwinnable situations, but criticized its short playing time. The magazine concluded that "Lure of the Temptress is a fine first release from this developer and bodes well for the future". Amiga Power ranked it at #47 in 1993, and at #66 in 1994, on their list of Amiga Power All-Time Top 100. It was also a commercial success, reaching number one in the British Gallup charts at the beginning of July 1992 and remaining in the Top 20 for most of the rest of the year.
Amiga Format stated that this "fine adventure game well worth investigating" could compete with Sierra and LucasFilm games; "in any event, Temptress surpasses almost anything Sierra have offered, by being larger, funnier, and a whole lot better drawn ... an innovative system knocks spots of the Sierra-standards and shows LucasFilm a thing or two" and also praised its humour, saying that there's "a good dose of tongue-in-cheek humour and fairy-tale nonsense."
Adventure Classic Gaming was less positive in its retrospective review, stating "what makes Lure of the Temptress fun—but also annoying—is the game's unique gameplay engine" and that its graphics "unfortunately do not hold up well over the passage of time," but that many of the backgrounds are "quite beautiful"