Companions of Xanth is an adventure game

Adventure game

An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...

 published in 1993 by Legend Entertainment

Legend Entertainment

Legend Entertainment was an American developer of computer games, best known for their complex, distinctive adventure titles throughout the 1990s....

. The game is based on Piers Anthony

Piers Anthony

Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob is an English American writer in the science fiction and fantasy genres, publishing under the name Piers Anthony. He is most famous for his long-running novel series set in the fictional realm of Xanth.Many of his books have appeared on the New York Times Best...

's Xanth

Xanth

Xanth is a fantasy world created by author Piers Anthony for his Xanth series of novels, also known as The Magic of Xanth.-History:The name Xanth is in itself an unintentional pun, which matches the playful tone of the books...

 novels and is loosely based around much of the plot of his novel Demons Don't Dream

Demons Don't Dream

Dug, a Mundane, is transported in to the magic land of Xanth when he plays a computer game introduced to him by his friend for a bet. The game consists of the player having a companion, who is usually a well known Xanth character, and being led through the magical world of Xanth, defeating...

, in which a young man uses a computer game to enter and explore the world of Xanth.

Typical to Piers Anthony's novels, the game is filled with puns and visual gags, and some knowledge of the Xanth universe is helpful; for those players who haven't read any of the Xanth novels, an in-game 'Com-Pendium of Xanth' is provided to the player for the majority of the game.

It was available on both floppy disk

Floppy disk

A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...

 and CD-ROM

CD-ROM

A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....

. The game uses 256 colour 2D graphics

2D computer graphics

2D computer graphics is the computer-based generation of digital images—mostly from two-dimensional models and by techniques specific to them...

.

Reception

The game was reviewed in 1994 in Dragon

Dragon (magazine)

Dragon is one of the two official magazines for source material for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game and associated products, the other being Dungeon. TSR, Inc. originally launched the monthly printed magazine in 1976 to succeed the company's earlier publication, The Strategic Review. The...

#204 by Sandy Petersen

Sandy Petersen

Carl Sanford Joslyn Petersen is a game designer.Petersen was born in St. Louis, Missouri and attended University of California, Berkeley, majoring in zoology....

in the "Eye of the Monitor" column. Petersen gave the game 3 out of 5 stars.

External links

• Xanthians Online: Includes information, screenshots, walkthrough.