Genre: Adventure
Release Year: 1996
Developer: Hue Forest Entertainment
Publisher: Hue Forest Entertainment
Age Rating: 12+
Playability Status: Fully playable (minor issues only)
Tested On: Windows 8 x64
Availability: Copyright retained - Out of print/unavailable
There are some ghostly goings on in an old house in North Carolina. Your enthusiastic ghost hunter friend Dr. Roxanne Westbridge is already on the scene, testing out her super new ghost detecting device. Eager to make sure the good doctor doesn’t get spirited away, you quickly drive to the mansion, only to crash your car due to a paranormal encounter once you arrive. Amber is another example of an early CD-ROM adventure game. Like many early CD titles, it used the medium to store lots of pre-rendered video and graphics. This gave the visuals a boost in quality over what was typically available at the time, but limited exploration and movement around the mansion to the pre-prepared vantage points stored on the games CD. While it’s easy to write the game off with it’s dated visuals and often clunky control system, more patient or simply nostalgic players will find that this is a compelling and excellently written adventure title.
Installation
The original installer for Amber is a 16 bit executable and will not run on 64 bit systems at all. Even if you have a 32 bit version of Windows, we strongly recommend that you use the replacement installer instead. The replacement installer is available here. Simply download the replacement installer and run it, making sure your Amber CD-ROM is in the drive. The installer will not only install the game but apply several patches to allow it to run on Windows Vista, 7 or 8.
Playing the game
Once the game has been installed with the replacement installer, there are no further steps to take and you can start enjoying the game.
Completing the game
We have not tested this game from start to finish and according to some users there are still some bugs in the updated version. Check in on the SquirtTheCat forums for more information, this thread in particular has workarounds for possible bugs in the game.
Thank you so much for providing a way to play this game once again.
I no longer have the amber journeys beyond disk anymore, long ago lost :( is there any way to download the full game?
One of the best adventure games, in this old dude’s opinion. Right up there with Riven which is my personal all time favorite. I do wish they had given a larger screen area since on a modern monitor it looks tiny, but still an absorbing late night adventure
This is such a great game! I’m in the works of trying to create a remake of the game in a modern engine like Unity so that modern gamers can also enjoy the world the Wimmers created. I could really use your help! The YouTube channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMWX_93sgQw1-TJcVdk_S5g
Does it also work with the German version? :(
I have followed the instructions re the patch for installing Amber JB. However, it failed… I am running Parallels on a Mac running Big Sur. I have Win10, Win 7 and WinXp. It wont run on Win10. I can’t even find it on Win Xp. But I hit the install on Win7 and get these errors:
Lifeboat.dxr could not be opened
XLib file not found
Also because I’m running an emulation the prog does not seem to recognise that the disc is in the DVD drive. I get an option to look for it but it’s actually on V: but I can’t select it.
This is so frustrating. I thought it was finally going to work.
Any advice? Thanks
Update:
I changed a few settings in the VM for Windows XP and somehow found the patch and ran it. Then I got an error message:
Script Error: Handler not defined #MOVUTILS
I clicked continue and I got excited when it ran the very first bit of intro. But then I got another error message:
#New Game then a Black Screen which I cannot get out of. Also Windows 7 has gone black too….not having much success here.
There must be a better way.