Lot of games over the years have tried to tap into the incredible popularity that horror movies and novels enjoy. Almost every genre has had its shot at recreating the creepy feeling you get as you flip through the pages of a good ghost story. Action gamers have Accolade's Elvira and Infograms' Alone in the Dark. Adventure fans have the Gabriel Knight series. Interactive movie lovers (there have to be some of you out there) have 7th Guest and the 11th Hour. Even puzzle gamers have been offered such titles as Haunted Casino and Shivers. The thing is, none of these games ever did a really good job of building off an established horror storyline (please, no gamers need write me about games like The Mist for the Apple II or Friday the 13th for the Commodore 64 - I'm trying to exclude them). That's all about to change. Legend Entertainment's latest game, The Blackstone Chronicles not only builds off an established storyline by a best-selling author, but also inspired those very books, possibly the first time a best-selling series has ever come from a video-game concept.

　　How did all this come about? Back in 1995, author John Saul (Creature, Second Child, Black Lightning) came to Legend with an idea for an adventure game that would take players into a haunted town, each house featuring a different slant on the horror. After Legend accepted the project, which was at that time code-named Madness, Saul decided to write a short prologue for the game box that would explain the premise of the game by taking players through the events that led up to the town's haunting. His publisher, excited by the idea, convinced Saul to release several expanded versions of these prologues in the form of small serial novels. The first title in the series, now renamed The Blackstone Chronicles hit the New York Times Bestseller list a #8, and each book in the series has continued to find its way onto the chart. Even more impressive, ABC picked up the rights to produce a six-hour mini-series based on the books. Not bad for what was originally intended to be box text!

　　OK, so the books are good, but what about the game itself? The storyline puts players in Blackstone, a small New England town that used to be the home of a famous asylum. Set shortly after the events that unfold in the book, the game starts by introducing players to some of the horrors that are still (the source of evil was supposed to have been uncovered in the last book) afflicting the town. As things heat up, players will discover that the evil is coming from the asylum, which in recent years has been undergoing renovation. Once the player enters the asylum, she will be confronted by the many evils that still lurk there - the further she goes, the closer she will come to finding the true meaning behind the mystery of the madhouse.

　　The game interface is an interesting intermediate between the forced views and single-step motion of Myst and the full freedom of games like The Pandora Directive. Players can step in different directions to predetermined spots, but once there can use their mouse to look around with about 90 degrees of freedom. This gives players a chance to examine anything that they think is important without condemning them to three hours of gameplay just trying to open a desk drawer. Right now, the company is promising an average of about 1.8 standing locations in each room, with 3.8 views per location. The final product should have 170 different game screens all rendered in the game's slick 24-bit graphics.

　　Although nothing so far about The Blackstone Chronicles gameplay is that impressive, the storyline has the potential to be the most powerful script ever written for a computer game. This, along with the game's fantastic sense of atmosphere and its promise for a nearly invisible interface means that The Blackstone Chronicles is a game that every adventure and horror fan should anticipating with bated breath.