Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals

Developer: White Birds Productions
Release year: 2008
Genre: Adventure, first person point and click

Paris, March 2023. The city is ruled by religious dictator Choublanc. Alicide Nikopol (you), a young artist joined a rebellion group and is running from the police. A mysterious pyramid space ship hovers over the city. A representative was sent to French government. The pyramid contains Egyptian gods known as Immortals. They want government to give them fuel. This doesn’t work and they try to take control over government. One of them, Horus wants to control all by himself and possesses Nikopol’s father body. Nikopol’s father spent last 30 years in a cryogenic prison. Anubis asks Alicide to find his father and stop Horus.

The game is based on La Foire aux immortels (The Carnival of Immortals) dystopian science fiction comic book written and illustrated by Enki Bilal. This book is part of Nikopol trilogy which also contains La Femme piège (The Woman Trap) and Froid Équateur (Equator Cold).

The game was developed by White Birds Productions founded by Benoît Sokal, Olivier Fontenay, Jean-Philippe Messian and Michel Bams. When I heard that the game uses first person perspective I was a little disappointed because I prefer third person point and click adventures. But the disappointment disappeared when I entered in an absolutely fantastic world.

The main menu is a panoramic view of the city with flying automobiles passing by, with Eiffel tower from which flames emerge like those seen on oil refineries, with soldiers patrolling between buildings. Nikopol is not like a classic adventure game. In Nikopol you can die, but you will replay the scene, over and over again until you pass it. Of course, you will get a hint (spoken by Alicide) of what you are supposed to do to keep you alive. I liked the idea; it gives you a little action. During game Alicide will remind you from time to time what your main goal is.

The game is full of various puzzles that keep you busy. There are puzzles like incapaciting the enemies, which are time based (you have a short amount of time to escape before you die). There are also puzzles that aren’t time based, like painting a portrait using different colors, breaking a brick wall with a hammer, creating a pass card using different structures of hexagons, creating a toxic gas, etc., etc. Most of the puzzles seemed hard enough to put your mind to work but logical and didn’t become frustrating. Some of them weren’t realistic, for instance, the puzzle where you were supposed to break bricks from a wall with a hammer. Well, you have a limited number of hits. The problem with this puzzle is that it wasn’t realistic. Let’s say I had to do this in a real life. Well I would I try to make a hole big enough so I can pass through it. But in the game, even if you make a hole which is big enough so you and all your relatives could pass, the game wouldn’t let you pass until you broke all peaces of that wall. I have to admit that from tine to time I had to take a sneak on a walkthrough.

Graphics are based on the book and are very well shaped. The city is so good looking that I wanted to walk on his streets like in Broken Sword 3. But, being a point and click adventure your locations are limited. The movies between the chapters of the game were created in comic book style. I observed here that the subtitles in English weren’t translated. Because I’m not a native English speaker (as you may have noticed), subtitles help me to understand better what I hear. But that wasn’t too annoying, I learned some French too. :p I have also noticed some bad translation. Instead of word “skull” they used “crane”, maybe from French word “crâne”. And in the same puzzle “far left from …” was actually near left as I found out later.

The music sounds like electronic music from 70s and it’s very futuristic, dark and often creates tension, anxiety. Also the ambient sounds are impressive. The sound of vehicles, of the city, of the machines improves the dark atmosphere of the game. You could also hear religious propaganda slogans from speakers in the city, like: “Don’t forget to attempt Judicial confession every Monday; absence will result in a ration ticket decrease.”, “In order to increase your internal well being we are carefully watching your behavior.”, “Support Choublanc and donate to the church of the Holly mission”, “Work and prayer are the two foundations of the Holly mission”. These remind you in what insane world you live.

The game was more than a pleasure for me. The graphics, the music, all the puzzles and the atmosphere from this dystopian world were very attractive and very exciting. Nikopol is like a nightmare from which you don’t want to wake up. Just play it.

System requirements:

• Microsoft Windows 98/SE/ME/2000/XP
• 1.7 GHz Pentium 4, AMD Athlon, or equivalent (2.4 GHz recommended)
• 512 MB RAM or 1024 MB with Vista (1024 MB recommended, or 2048 MB with Vista)
• 128MB DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics card ATI Radeon 9600 / NVIDIA 6 series or higher
• DirectX 9.0c compatible sound device
• 3 GB hard drive space
• DVD-ROM 16x or faster