Adban de Corcy

Willy's Afterlife

The Plot:
Willy, finally, tired from being dragged from a place to another, tired of picking shiny objects, dies of exhaustion. After a painfully beautiful funeral, he's buried in the family crypt and left to rest until the Day of Judgement. But, two years later, when our hero is sleeping the rest of the dead, the unbelievable happens, and, despite all the security, God's Museum of Relics is assaulted by unknown parties and it's contents are racked. Pursued by God's angels, the unknown thieves drop the bounty all around the lands of the dead, and depart for better horizons.

Uriel, Poison of God, is ordered to find the bounty; but it seems that he holds a grudge against our hero for some unknown reason, and so says to God: "I know the ideal guy for this job". So, Uriel kicks Willy out of his tomb, throws him to Hell (the last place where relics have been seen) and orders him to pick them all, or there won't be any eternal rest for him.

And there goes Willy, skeletal but with his hat on his head, ready to tour the lands of the dead to find Uriel, his tomb and the 200 relics stolen from God's Museum and win eternal rest (probably God will resurrect him for his superb job, but that's another story...). We find him in "The Gates of Hell"; where will you go? Right, going deeper into Hell, or Left, to only God knows where?

Playing the Game:
"Willy's Afterlife" possesses 61 screens, which can be divided in thematic areas, more or less interconnected in a classical, mind-boggling way. These areas include Heaven, Hell, the Lands of Death and some other places.

I don't think it to be an extremely difficult game; it's good, I think, for both novice and expert JSW players. Anyhow, I was more interested in designing beautiful, thematic-coherent screens that in hellish (no pun intended) screens, so maybe some of you will find it too easy. I don't think so, but go trying to find all the 200 relics, and let's hope you will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed designing it.

As a side note, Willy is an spirit, and so he cannot die from falls, but he can die from all other usual hazards in JSW games...

The Characters and the Game music:
The main character is, of course, Willy (skeletal due to the time passed on his tomb). His antagonist is no longer Maria, but Uriel the Archangel, and his enemies are all the other denizens of the Afterlife, unwilling to have a simple mortal walking around them before being judged. These include a complete set of gods and goddesses, angels, lost souls, devils and other metaphysical hazards.
The game music is a fantasy on the "Dies Irae" theme, from the Gregorian liturgy, and the intro game music is a short piece composed by myself, called "Nocturne".

• Year: 2000
• Format: ZXS, SNA
• Size: 55Kb
• Zip-file include: 1 TAP-file, 1 ZXS-file and 1 text-file

Review written by Sendy

As a concept piece, this gets full marks for execution, style, and theme. The graphics are great and completely original to fit the new theme - including Willy who is now a mere skeleton. The locations are excellently crafted and include (fairly predictably) Heaven and Hell, as well as a wealth of other locations from religeous mythology. Perhaps it's all wasted on me, because I don't have much knowledge on this subject (hey - I know about the river Styx though!), but nevertheless, I found it all completely absorbing and convincing - this truly IS Willy's afterlife!

The gameplay is quite simple (in a good way), there are no mind boggling points where you think "how in Hell do you do that?" (no pun intended), and this leaves you more free to go on a sort of sight-seeing tour, and of course to concentrate on collecting those ubiquitous flashing objects! However, there are still some tricky rooms - notably, the Forest of Suicides which features some incredibly tricky jumps and can be quite infuriating.

My favourite screens were undoubtedly the ones set in Heaven (maybe because I am so pure and heavenly myself :) which feature cute fluffy cloud platforms and angels flitting about. The desert, the City of Brass and it's buildings also make an interesting pilgrimage.

This is highly playable and marvelously excecuted, and not to be missed!

It seems that Willy finished his tour around the Afterlife, recovered all God's lost relics, and was resurrected as a reward for his good work. So, all was fine in Willy's life for a little while when, just two months after his resurrection, an odd letter arrived at his front door:

"To my dear nephew Willy:

I have been recently informed of our ties of kinship and, it would be a pleasure to invite you and your servants to a brief holiday at my castle, here in Bulgaria, to enforce those blood ties that should have never got snapped...

Yours sincerely, your dearest uncle: Jetza Setov Willovsky, XVIII Count of Willovsky, Bulgaria."

Bulgaria looked like an OK country, so Willy, Maria and André took their luggage, and got a flight to meet Willy's enigmatic uncle. But as soon as they arrived at Count Willovsky's castle, odd things began to happen..."

Playing the Game:

Willy begins the game in "Count Willovsky’s Pipe Organ", after his uncle has finished telling him his plans to turn him into a vampire. There are not many options for our hero, aren’t there?

Characters

And here is our hero again, Willy, as the main character in a Gothic tour around a Bulgarian castle. Maria and André don’t appear in the game; they both run away as soon as the furniture began to move.

Count Jetza Setov Willovsky: He’s an ancient vampire, and he wants to incorporate Willy to the undead Willovsky dynasty, and add the mansion to his possessions. He tells Willy his plans, and then lets him free to ponder his fate and wander the castle, unable to escape.

Marina Lezcanova: Marina is the castle Housemistress, the Bulgarian reflection of Maria. She is as wicked as her alter ego, and she protects the gas can that Willy needs to fuel his car and run away from this horrid place.

Lady Anathema Willovskova: The first vampire wife of Count Jetza. Anathema is a necrophagus (she eats human corpses), and Jetza hates her. Andrei is her pawn, so the kitchens are near her bedroom.

Lady Belladonna Willovskova: Belladonna is the only one in the castle that doesn’t hate Willy; she’s quite decent for vampire standards. She is Jetza’s true love, and she bore him a son before becoming undead: Matheos Willovsky, heir of the castle.

Lady Castratrix Willovskova: Lady Castatrix’ marriage was a matter of politics, not love. She is absolutely mad (she’s obsessed with cutting down penises and feeding them to her carnivorous plants), so Jetza moved her bedroom away from him.

Lady Dominatrix Willovskova: Lady Dominatrix was quite in love with Count Jetza. But he betrayed her, and told her that their marriage had been only a matter of political convenience. So, in spite, she hates all the inhabitants of the castle, except the sex slaves she keeps for perverse entertainment (whom she despises).

Lady Evilia Willovskova: Lady Evilia is the youngest of the wives, but she is also the most dangerous. She hates Willy with a passion, and tried by every mean on Earth to destroy him during his first days in the castle, so Count Jetza has forbidden her to leave her bedroom, and turned it into a cell.

Matheos Willovsky: He is Count Jetza’s only heir, and the son of Belladonna. The other wives hate him, but as he is stronger than them, they cannot do anything. He despises Willy, and doesn’t want him to become a vampire.

Andrei Lezcanov: Marina’s brother, Andrei is the castle’s cook, a master of vampiric and necrotic gastronomy. His rule over the kitchens is absolute.

Also, there’s a full cast of castle guards, carnivorous plants, bats, etc…

The game music:

Both game music pieces are of my own design; they are both quite simple, but useful for the mood of the game: the intro music is called "Blood Sonata", and the game music is simply a pseudo-Bulgarian church song.

Erix1's review
By God, Abdan has done it again! Bulgarian Requiem is the sequel to Abdan's first JSW-game Willy's Afterlife. The story begins two months after God's resurrection of Willy, with Willy and his staff getting an invitation to spend their holidays at Jetza Setov Willovsky's castle in Bulgaria. (Willovsky is Willy's long lost vampire uncle, who wants to incorporate Willy to the undead Willovsky dynasty...) Well, we don't get to see much of Maria and André during the game since they both sod of before the game begins, but we do get to say hello to an impressive cast of corps-eating, penis-cutting, highly sexually active vampire maidens. All of witch have their own little story going (love... hate... politics...) Anyway, after the uncle reveals his plans for Willy, our hero gets to wander the castle to ponder his fate, which gives Willy an opportunity to steal the gas can guarded by Marina Lezcanova (Maria's Bulgarian reflection), and escape in the car parked outside the horrible castle. (In order to make Marina vanish, you'll have to collect 220 items...) The graphics are good and imaginative (Seems like all guardians refuse to move horizontaly in anything but 8-pixels-at-the-time-style... But, it just gives the game that good old vampire feeling...), the level of difficulty is just about perfect and it's probably the record holder among JSW clones what shooting arrows are conserned. -Well worth a download!