The start menu of the game, giving the idea of an old silent movie.
Die Reise ins All
is a free German Steampunk game made in RPG Maker. Its title translates to The Journey to Space, and it is set in our world at the end of the 19th century. The game was influenced by the works of Verne, Doyle, and Wells, with a crazy inventor, giant canons to travel to Mars and an following invasion.
The player will play partly only with one or two heroes but will collect a group of four people over time. In the end, these are:
- Lieutenant von Mackwitz: a German (Prussian) trooper, not the brightest bulb in the box, but with a lot of national pride and love for big guns.
- Professor Heisen: The mad scientist of the story, discovers an ancient power source, that seems to come from Mars and is eager to travel there.
- Fräulein Eleonore: A journalist, willingly to fight against the military's attempts to use Heisen's inventions as weapons. Being much smarter than Mackwitz and on the opposite ends of the politic table, they fight a lot at the start of the game. But it gets better.
- Frankenstein's monster
Tropes present in this game:
- Adaptational Villainy: When the heroes meet Sherlock Holmes, he seems to be the heroic character everyone knows him as. Later it's revelaed that he is nothing but an invention and masquerade of Professor Moriarty, one of the game's big bads.
- Alien Invasion: There's one from Mars.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Der Martian Leader (The Great Chocker) and Rankapech
- Blackmail: To get a ride on one of Graf Zeppelin's airships, one has to find a letter from Sigmund Freud in his safe. You can never read the full letter, but von Mackwitzs comment hint at the problem of the...phallic form of those airships...
- Character Development: Von Mackwitz goes through some impressive development. In the beginning, he blindly obeys every single order he is given and thus acts without questioning his superiors. When the group return to Earth and his treacherous superior, von Schleicher, gives him the order to arrest his friends, he needs all his willpower to successfully disobey the order.
- Later on, when he and his friends arrive in wild west of the USA, and they free the slave Jim (yes, Huck Finns friend) after he got captured by the Klu Klux Clan just by being ordered to follow them, Mackwitz gives him the advice not to follow every order without question. But of course only in really important cases.
- Cool Boat: The Nautilus.
- Demonic Possession Happens with Professor Heisen and Rankapech, some kind of evil ghost from Mars.
- Diabolical Mastermind: Professor Moriarty.
- Evil All Along: See Adaptational Villainy above.
- Four-Man Band:
- The Butt-Monkey: All four have their moments, but von Mackwitz, especially. His stubbornness and trend to just jump into action and attack brings him into a lot of funny moments.
- The Only Sane Woman: Eleonore is overall the most rational thinking one of the group, most of the time.
- The Smart Guy: Professor Heisen, naturally.
- Casanova Wannabe: Frankenstein's monster fits this the best. He is quite interested in Eleonore, especially at the start, doing a lot of things just to impress her (and to make von Mackwitz look bad).
- Framing Device: The game picks up with an man entering library to find a interesting book to readk, picking the titular 'Die Reise ins All'.
- Freud Was Right: See Blackmail above.
- Gentle Giant: Frankenstein's Monster and, at some points, von Mackwitz.
- The Hero Dies: See Heroic Sacrifice
- Heroic Sacrifice: Played with: At the end of the game von Mackwitz dealays the explosion of the giant alien machine long enough, that his friends can escape. Then the explosion follows, with him still close to the machine, the game cuts black and jumps to the big parade to his honour. Eleonore mentions towards their kids, she wished their father could see that parade - just for von Mackwitz to arrive, who had survived and originally just couldn't come to see the parade for a completely different reason.
- Idiot Hero: Von Mackwitz.
- Inexplicably Identical Individuals: The Owners of the Inns in every single place look completely the same (even the one on Mars) and are in fact all indentical brothers.
- Kaiserreich: Von Mackwitz and his military , the imperical cavalary unit.
- The Leader: Mackwitz would count as the headstrong type.
- Mad Scientist: Professor Heisen, Doktor Frankenstein and Professor Moriarty.
- The Medic: Fräulein Eleonore
- Mental World: At two points of the story the heroes end up in Martian mind traps which makes each one experience an individual dream world. The first time those are ideal dreams (Von Mackwitz: an neverending war, Heisen: Happily married with a big family, Eleonore: Winning the pulitzer prize, the creature: owning his own backery), the second time nightmares (Von Mackwitz: a world with no weapons or war, Heisen: Happily married with a big family, Eleonore: Mackwitz steadily getting hurt, the creature: hunted by the corpses his body parts have been taken from, Heisen: a wasteland, alone with Rankapech trying to take over his mind).
- Nested Story: At one point after boarding their space ship to Mars von Mackwitz can decide to read a book, picking up Treasure Island. The game will then switch to the story, turning Jim Hawking to the playable character, and can either be played in full or quitted, whenever the player wants to - though he then can't pick it up again. There's only one point in the game, where he could do this, so the player will miss some nice part of the game and bonus points if he quits it early or didn't picks it up at all.
- Powers via Possession: Works like this with Professor Heisen. Being possessed by an evil ghost from Mars, gave him a lot of powers. Some people would wonder, where got them, but it will take a long time, to figure it out.
- The Quiet One: Frankenstein's Monster, especially the first time after it joins the group.
- Sealed Evilin A Can: Rankapech, banned and locked in some old martian ruins on earth, and getting freed by Professor Heisen.
- Shout-Out:
- The main story resembles mostly the stories of the novels From the Earth to the Moon, and The War of the Worlds, but contains a lot more references.
- One of the main antagonist is Professor Moriarty.
- While visiting the opera Eleonore is kidnapped by a masked man, living in the building.
- In an early point of the game, you take the Orient Express to Transylvania. There you meet Alfred Nobel, Thomas Edison, Captain Nemo, Captain Ahab, Dr. Jekyll as well as Holmes and Watson. You would help the last two solving a murder on the train.
- Shortly after, after being tossed off the train von Mackwitz also encounters Phileas Fogg and Jean Passepartout who need a ride. They find help in Graf Zeppelin.
- Zeppelin also had contact with Sigmund Freud.
- If you decide to travel to India later in the game, you can encounter Fogg and Passepartout again.
- In an early chapter, the group of heroes travels to Transylvania. There they meet Doktor Frankenstein, complete with his monster (which becomes the fourth group member) and his assistant Igor, find the cave of Count Dracula/Vlad Tepes and meet a wolfman who later turns out to be Kaspar Hauser
- When the heroes land in the first Martian mindtrap, Heisen, after noticing that things are off, gains some help from Jean-Luc Picard.
- On the way back from Mars, the heroes crash and end in a jungle filled with dinosaurs and long-gone creatures. Heisen quickly notices that Professor Challenger's theorie must be right.
- Though, later they encounter frog- and snake-people and it turns out, that they didn't crash on earth, as expected, but on Venus. This could be a reference to the German pulp magazine series Perry Rhodan, where the Venus contains dinosaurs and snakes, too.
- When traveling to the Wild West to gather reinforcements, they need to find exactly seven heroes, namely Buffalo Bill, Winnetou, Leatherstocking, General Custer, Zorro and also two sheriffs, who will fight a lot.
- The Smart Guy: Professor Heisen mostly. Even if everybody seems pretty smart compared to von Mackwitz.
- Story Branching: At a late point in the game, after the Martians started her world invasion you have to choose. Do you want to find recruting further heroes in the Wild West, or do you travel to India to stop the Martian army there?
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: A slight case with the Treasure Island-chapter (see Nested Story above): Aside from changing up the main character and setting, this part is overall similiar to the main game, with a strong focus on puzzles, exploring, humor and a few mini games. Though, it lacks the typical Turn-based combat of the rest of the game.
- Zeppelins from Another World: There's the Meteor, Captain Nemo's airship, that looks a lot like an airship version of the Nautilus.
