Future Wars

Future Wars
European cover art of Future Wars
Developer(s)	Delphine Software
Publisher(s)	Delphine Software
Designer(s)	Paul Cuisset
Artist(s)	Eric Chahi
Composer(s)	Jean Baudlot
Engine	Cinematique
Platform(s)	PC (DOS), Amiga, Atari ST, NEC PC-9801, Sharp X68000
Release	1989
Genre(s)	Adventure
Mode(s)	Single-player

Future Wars, subtitled in Europe as Time Travellers and in North America as Adventures in Time and known in France as Time Travelers: The Menace (French: Les Voyageurs du Temps: La Menace) is an adventure game from Delphine Software International, released in 1989. The game is mainly the work of Paul Cuisset (story and programming) and Eric Chahi (graphics). The game was supposed to be the first of a series of adventure games revolving around time traveling but later episodes were never made.

Future Wars is played by left-clicking for character movement, and right-clicking for character actions. The actions available in the right-click popup menu are: Operate, Examine, Take, Use and Inventory. "Use" had a subcategory which enabled the player to drag and select the items in their inventory.

The player starts the game as a window cleaner dressed in white overalls who is in the middle of cleaning the outside of a skyscraper. According to later references, the game starts in 1989 (also when Future Wars was first retailed).

The player character is not given a name throughout the game. The game cursor identifies him only as 'hero'. He is standing on an electric elevator platform attached to the exterior of the building when 'Ed the boss' opens a window to reprimand him for slacking by banging his fist against the window ledge and shouting. The player then can enter the building and, while playing a prank on Ed, he discovers a secret passage leading to a machine room. There he acquires some documents in an alien language which he keeps in the inventory.

The device takes the player to the year 1304, where the hero has the chance to rescue a damsel in distress from dubious monks. He learns then that she is Lo'Ann, a time traveler who came with her father Lear to thwart an alien plot to plant a long-delay time bomb, and he helped them to succeed in their mission against the Crughons. However, by learning things he shouldn't, he must be taken to the Supreme Council of the future so that his fate is decided.