The Reksio Games

vladalexan (57)in Steem Gaming • 4 years ago

Hi there! If you grew up around Eastern Europe, the name Reksio might be familiar to you. It all started with an animated series originating from Poland and he even has a statue in the country, so yeah, Reksio is a big deal.

Poland is now known for CD Projekt RED (considered a national treasure nowadays) and Techland (of Call of Juarez, Dead Island and Dying Light fame), but there was another small studio which carried the Polish flag: Aidem Media. They made licensed games based on Polish properties like the aforementioned Reksio and Lolek & Bolek. Their games were adventure games and over here they were published by a book company called Erc Press and they were bundled with a magazine which contained stuff like side stories to the games, hints, the antipiracy codes and stuff like crosswords.

So, let's talk about Aidem Media's flagship series. I am not familiar with the original or English titles, the latter of which do not really exist, as these games were completely dubbed in Romanian when they came over from Poland

The first game in the series is Reksio in Pirate's Treasure (Reksio şi Comoara Piraţilor in my language). You can beat the game in less than two hours and the booklet which came with it is mostly made out of hints and solutions to the puzzles. Pirate's Treasure is mostly a collection of minigames strung along on a linear story path which has our humanoid dog protagonist getting stranded on a tropical island because he was caught by a storm while windsurfing. It is so cheesy and I love it. You eventually work your way into a volcano in which there is a crashed UFO filled with alien chickens. Yes, the games just started to get bonkers. Reksio eventually finds the pirate's treasure, is captured by rat pirates, let go and the indigenous chickens of the island give him a new windsurfing board to go home. The game ends on a cliffhanger with Reksio sleeping in his doghouse.

The saga continues with Reksio being woken up in the middle of the night, as alien chickens are kidnapping the chickens owned by his...owners. A new character is introduced, Rooster Artificer (I'll never get used to the English names) which implores Reksio to save the chickens. In order totry to save them, you play...Space Invaders, what else. The game goes on after that, introducing Kretes the mole (Moles the mole in English for some reason), although he had cameos in the first game. You then start the adventure gameplay, collecting parts for a space ship, like a washing machine, a stove, ropes. This ship is Diesel-powered. No, not the combustible, a hamster named Diesel. The game starts another minigame after you build the space ship, which is a horizontal shooter basically, like those arcade ones from yesteryear. From here on out, you go to different planets in space with homages to Romeo and Juliet, the French Resistance (in this homage to the French resistance Kretes meets his future wife, Molly) and Che Guevarra (Ghe Cuevarra in game), an homage to Dune, but with pig weed instead of spice on planet Kurakis, and the ending is a chickeny homage to the end of A New Hope, as you fight the Kurator aboard the Death Egg and he downright references that he can't be your father. It is revealed that the Kurator is the long lost brother of Rooster Artificer and he comes with you to Earth and settles with you as a friend.

The series goes on with Reksio and the Magicians (Reksio şi Magicienii), which I did not finish, as the version I own is bugged to hell and locks up and the saves get erased. The game as a whole is an homage to Harry Potter, but there are some other fun references. In the beginning, you are transported to Magix, a magical land, and you have to chase a rabbit, like in Alice in Wonderland. A bit later, you reach the magic school and you are presented with a Matrix reference by one of the professors: take the red bone and you will help this land and learn magic, or take the blue bone and you go home, forgetting everything that happened. There is only one problem, and that is the fact that the blue bone has been lost. So you take the red bone and your first spell is covering your enemies in pudding. Funnily enough, the spellcasting system is identical to Arx Fatalis, because you have to draw runes in the air to cast them. Past this, I do not know much about the game and how it ends.

Now we are getting to my first experience with the games: Reksio and the Time Machine (Reksio şi Maşina Timpului). I have replayed this game many times and it is ingrained in my memory. The gist is, the game starts in the future with Kretes talking to his grandchildren about the first few games and his friendship with Reksio. When he reaches the ending of Magicians, which is Reksio and Kretes finding the blue bone and a letter from a figure telling them that they must talk in the past, more specifically, in the Medieval times. The Rooster built the time machine out of a big blue couch, some suspension springs, a tuba and many other weird things, but first they must build a crane to pull out the cork from the bottom of a nearby pond, as it is a mole hole (a play on wormhole).The time travel segment is represented by guiding the couch through a maze with pendulums and time related stuff. Our heroes end up in the prehistoric era, and they must solve a few puzzles to create the first car and, by extension, the first wheel. This car is created by an ancestor of the Rooster and the engine is...an ancestor of Diesel. The car helps them get past a huge field with dinosaurs, only for them to meet alien moles. You use their ship which looks like the Millennium Falcon, but purple, to scare the dinosaurs into a wormhole to save them from extinction which is theorized to have been caused by a meteorite, only that now it is the ship you are driving which is crashing because it ran out of fuel. This is convenient, as the crash opens up a new mole hole and they travel to Pisa, and they come out beneath the tower, creating the Leaning Tower. Here comes the Order of Rosetail (Ordinul Pernelor Băgăcioase) with a "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition reference". They take you to prison, from which you evade through a series of puzzles and a 4th wall break with Kretes noting the absence of the narrator. I'm going to try and cut it short, because there is a lot more game to cover and this paragraph is huge already. They end up going to a dystopian future and making a "tears in the rain" reference and then they are going back to alter the timeline. In the end, our duo gets stuck in the 19th century, leading up into the next game.

Reksio and Captain Nemo is a game I am incapable of finishing. The game has you going through Paris, even the Moulin Rouge, it has you meet Mata Hari on a train, and it has an Around the world in 80 days feel, which is appropriate, as there is also captain Nemo in here completing the Jules Verne package. Personally, I am forever stuck on the Egypt chapter, as I must assemble a plaque in a minigame similar to the C64 game Boulder Rush. The game is gorgeous as ever, but I do not know how it ends or how far from the ending I am.

The next mainline game is a huge leap in technology, but a small step back in artistry. City of Secrets (Reksio şi Kretes în Oraşul Secretelor) is the first 3D game in the series. This is also the first game with English dubbing. The storz revolves around Reksio falling into the City of Secrets, which is inhabited by moles. Kretes/Moles then tries to rescue him and they unravel a giant conspiracy threatening the city. I do not wish to spoil this one, as it is a game you can actually play and understand, as opposed to the rest of the series.

Lastly, there is City of Secrets 2 Epsiode 1, which was supposed to be a sequel to the last game, evidently. This is the only game which was not dubbed in Romanian and the first game launched only on mobile platforms. It has been delisted from Google Play, there was no Episode 2 and Aidem Media lost the license for Reksio and never reacquired it, so it will never be continued. Back when I found this out, I was devastated, as I really enjoyed the series up to that point, but alas, not everything has a happy ending.

All in all all I can tell you is that there were a few Reksio side games, like educational ones about language and math, but also a 3D puzzler called Reksio and Kretes The Mistery of the Third Dimension (Reksio şi Kretes Misterul Celei de a Treia Dimensiuni), a minigame collection called Reksio and Kretes in Action (Reksio şi Kretes în Acţiune) and a board game with minigames called Reksio Micul Înţelept. These are unrelated to the overall story of the adventure games, but they were nice too. Sadly, times passed and the Reksio franchise has been lost to the ages.

Images: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.