A Fairy-Tale Start

Once upon a time in the land of Hollywood, three kings combined their mighty war chests to send forth troops to conquer the most powerful forces in the land--movies, television, recordings and the newest fiefdom, CD-ROMs.

The kings, calling themselves DreamWorks, had some early success in recordings, got off to a shaky start in TV and had yet to storm the battlefronts of movie box offices when they brought forth a fairy tale as their entry into the particularly hazardous war zone known as CD-ROMs, where the gods of commerce had already unmercifully depleted many a war chest.

This fairy tale, called “The Neverhood,” will make its debut on store shelves next Thursday. It tells a story of innocence, betrayal, greed, selflessness and triumph, all set in a world fashioned out of more than three tons of clay.

And even those who do not wish good fortune on the kings--or on their widely unloved partner in this venture, a kingdom all its own known as Microsoft--will be hard pressed not to admit that this CD-ROM game is one of the most inventive, stunningly beautiful and engaging titles in the young genre.

“The Neverhood,” created by a team of animators and artists in Orange County headed by Doug TenNapel, is a claymation adventure that is almost wholly delightful and original.

The adventure begins with the main character--a beige, red and brown clay figure known as Klayman--asleep on the floor of a small room. We don’t know it yet, but Klayman is a complete innocent; indeed he has just been created, fully grown.

With a mouse click, we wake him and send him out to explore the clay world, done in luscious colors the hue of icing on Christmas cookies. The design of Klayman and the characters he meets looks as if they were influenced by the work of the late animators Tex Avery and Bob Clampett, who were psychedelic long before that term was coined.

One of several conventions “The Neverhood” borrows from the pioneering CD-ROM “Myst” is that when you begin the game, you know little about the world you’ve entered or the nature of your goal. The more you explore, the more you learn.

But to make your way around the Neverhood of castles, laboratories, cottages and twisted landscapes, you have to solve puzzles. For example, one of the first locales Klayman enters is a blue and pink room with a door at one end with an inviting button on it.

Using mouse clicks, you direct Klayman to push the button, only to have a boxing glove suddenly spring out from the door and flatten him with a punch. (The slapstick violence is all cartoon-like. Klayman can’t die, except in one spot that is clearly marked.)

After a good bit of trial and error, you figure out that by using a series of hanging rings overhead and the strategic use of a snapdragon creature who conveniently resides in the room, you can open the door.

As Klayman makes his way around this almost-deserted world, he occasionally comes across little videos that he collects and places in strategically placed players. The videos tell the story of the world; the more of them you collect, the more you learn about what happened and how you can bring the world back to life.

The storytelling video device also has its seeds in “Myst,” but the stylized videos are so skillfully done and fun to watch that any lapse in originality can be forgiven.

Although this is childlike in the best sense of the word, many of the puzzles are fiendishly difficult and will take hours to solve. The best advice is to try everything as you make your way around the world and remain alert to visual and aural clues. The difficulty is probably the reason the creators of the game suggest it for ages 17 and up, although I’ve seen a lot of kids younger than that solve CD-ROM riddles more deftly than adults.

“The Neverhood” has its shortcomings. The story culminates in a less than satisfying way and, except for a wonderful creation named Willie Trombone, most of the characters are bland.

Although the puzzles are clever and satisfying (once you get them solved), the reason for their existence is not woven into the story line, so there is not much of an emotional drive to solve them, except they enable you to explore more of the world. Finally, its estimated price of $55 is comparatively high and will limit the number of people who can enjoy it.

These misgivings aside, “The Neverhood” marks a great debut for DreamWorks Interactive.