| Adventure |
MOST MONTHS the games sent in for review tend to be a mixed bag and usually only one or two stand out from the general run of average productions. This month is exceptional as all five programs reviewed are either excellent, value for money, break new ground or restate old values. Whatever the depth of your pocket you should find at least one that suits you or your wallet.
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The large scale text-only game has gone underground lately and graphics have come forward as the favoured element in adventures. Mordon's Quest bucks this trend and is a welcome return, with long flavoursome descriptions and a vast feeling of space.
The program is a sequel to Melbourne House's Classic Adventure and is written by the same author, John Jones-Steele. There are over 150 locations and, according to the blurb, more than 400 words in the vocabulary. The presentation is a restful white text on a black background with your inputs scrolling up in yellow.
The quest begins in a strange and sparsely furnished house set in the swirling mists of a time limbo. Logical exploration reveals little at first but, if you are curious enough, a fall from a height will leave you nauseous and predisposed to concussed visions. So appears Mordon the Ancient One, swathed in light. He asks you to take on the search for the lost pieces of an immortality device - your success will save the universe from assured destruction.
With the aid of a transporter unit and torch you set off into the mists. Sure enough you quickly enter a steaming jungle full of ancient ruins. After passing the mandatory patch of quicksand, you will run into a cannibal pygmy who can be disposed of by making a weapon from the bits and pieces found lying around in the jungle. Don't forget the pygmy as you journey - the carnivorous plants can be placated by a spot of judicious feeding!
The search now begins in earnest and, though you will discover some treasure and the first part of Mordon's machine quite quickly, you'll need to put in some serious thinking to progress into the other areas of the game.
The descriptions are excellent, full of atmosphere and needing no pictures to help them. When you arrive at the temple in the heart of the ruinous city you see a lake ... "you walk to the lake and dive in. After swimming for several minutes you find yourself at a small outcrop of black rock. Looking around you, you see the perfect circle of the lake, surrounded by the ruined city and in turn the lush jungle. As you view the scenery you feel almost as if you are standing at the centre of a beautiful all-seeing eye."
This literate and evocative text is typical of the game as a whole and the detail encourages exploration and experiment. I have no doubt that many clues are hidden in this wealth of description. Don't think of the lack of graphics as a loss - just give three cheers for text compression and expect some good hunting!
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Sorderon's Shadow - The Legend of Elindor is the most innovative of this month's selection. Beyond has consistently tried to push out the frontiers of games software and this latest program is no exception. In fact the scope of the game is so wide that it would be difficult to explain all its facets in such a small space.
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The setting is the land of Elindor, much troubled by the evil of the sorcerer Sorderon. That wicked magus has blighted the land by his spells and the country is wasted by his minions and creatures. Krillan zombie warriors terrorise the people and other half-human things haunt the landscape.
You are cast as the Un-named One, foretold in legend as the saviour of Elindor. To defeat Sorderon you must successfully accomplish nine major quests, all of which are subdivided into lesser tasks. Most of those tasks involve the enlisting of other characters, many of whom are hostile or indifferent to you. At other points you will need to reconstruct magical artifacts such as the Staff of Power, or trade items of power for others necessary to your purpose. The overthrow of Sorderon is no straightforward matter.
Your journey takes place in a landscape familiar to addicts of Lords of Midnight or Doomdark's Revenge. As you move from location to location the features shift in perspective and size on the screen. You can view the country from all eight major compass directions before deciding where you want to go. There are mountains, plains, lakes and forests. Within those you will discover tombs, huts, caves and other man-made places. Beyond claim over 4,000 locations and a staggering 33,000 screen views.
Commands are given in a variety of ways. By pressing Symbol Shift you can access a range of single key instructions. With those you can move, get an inventory, count your money, identify other characters, and carry out a number of other functions like scoring, saving and so on. There is also a full text interpreter which allows you to play the game as a text adventure too. That takes the program beyond the systems used in Lords of Midnight and provides a wide variety of choice for your approach to the game.
The interpreter shows the results of your actions on a scroll above the landscape and informs you of any problems in your input with an error message buffer. The screen also displays your strength - you'll need to find food - and shows small graphics of the characters who are with you in the location.
There are many other inhabitants of Elindor living their own lives around you in real time. You can speak to them and get them to help or do your bidding. You may, of course, need to fight them so you will have to be quick on the uptake.
Before you begin you will need to familiarise yourself with the very complex game format. There is a vast wodge of documentation with the cassette and I advise you to spend a fair bit of time taking it all in. The quests and sub-quests are very involved.
The first quest is to follow your companion Morrin to the cave where a magical urn is secreted. The inscription on it will provide more clues to your task and Morrin then vanishes you're on your own. My own first priority was to get used to the landscape - it took me a while to realise that wandering unprepared and unarmed was perilous, and I found myself being slaughtered regularly. Make sure you Save a position early on as you cannot simply quit and begin again - you have to load in a prepared set of data.
My review copy was a pre-production version and I ran into a few glitches in the program. At one point I typed 'Wait' - everything crashed and I couldn't get the game going again. The text interpreter kept telling me that my sentence lacked a verb when it clearly didn't. Fortunately, that did not affect the play much and it's worth remembering that there are very few other games which even possess that sort of error-trapping function.
Sorderon's Shadow is a heady blend of text adventure and strategy, and is a true successor to the realms of Midnight. I am sure that it will have a strong appeal to those who have clashed with Doomdark, and it should pull in many other text players who may have shied away from the military bias of those previous programs. In some ways it is experimental, but definitely shows the way forward for mixed format games. Good luck and don't talk to any strange lizards.
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Sometime back in the Middle Ages the real Robin Hood began his career as the people's outlaw. Over the years he has undergone many transformations, and is nowadays portrayed as a freedom-fighter cum guerilla whose sold aim is to lift the yoke of Norman oppression from the Saxons' necks.
Robin of Sherwood from Adventure International is the computer spin-off from the TV series and portrays the new style Robin.
Like other Adventure International products, the game is mixed text and location graphics. A few of the pictures have some element of animation - such as the cascading waterfall - and are finely detailed, well drawn and very fast in appearing.
As in the TV series, you begin by finding yourself banged up in the sheriff's oubliette. To escape you will have to kill the guard and open the grating that pens you in. Adventure International feels that early achievement in an adventure helps to hook you into the game and the instruction sheet offers some useful coded help with that problem.
Once you've successfully broken out you should meet Herne the Hunter - Robin's godlike helper. He will tell you to seek out the six Touchstones of Rhiannon. You will need to find your band and then explore the huge forest for clues and information.
Your adversaries include, naturally, the Sheriff of Nottingham and also Knights Templar, corrupt taxmen, venal Nuns and the extremely evil Simon De Belleme - the Crusader magician.
The problems rapidly become more complex and it seems that certain actions have to occur before others become possible. Until you have won the archery contest it's impossible to rescue Marion from the sorcerer, and it is very easy to be recaptured by the Sheriff if you make rash judgements.
Other characters will lay sub-quests on you - the Templars, for instance, will freely admit that they possess a stone but won't part with it until you have found their stolen Holy Crest. The Nuns offer to sell theirs for a lot of gold - all you have to do is go out and steal it. But where from?
I found the scenario compelling and the identification with Robin very easy given the fine graphics. It is good to see one of our own home-grown heroes in adventure action, and I thoroughly recommend Robin of Sherwood to all potential freedom-fighters. The game is a little pricey at £9.95 but it is worth saving up for.
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Regular readers of this column will know that I have a distinct partiality for odd storylines and original plots.
The Secret of St Bride's falls smack dab into that category. St Bride's is a real school in Ireland but its set up is like a girls' boarding school fifty years ago. The, er, more mature lady may enjoy spending a week or so there to see what a private school was like in that remote era.
This Quilled adventure, with location graphics, is set in that, abode of learning and begins as Trixie Trinian arrives there for her hols. Having donned your gymslip you start to wonder just what on earth this odd, place is about, with its ancient wirelesses and copies of newspapers from the 1920s.
Your main task is to find out what the secret of the school is and then return it to present day normality. Built into the game is a search for a mysterious amulet - almost a game in itself. Anyone discovering the Secret will be awarded a St Bride's Certificate of Merit by the Games Mistresses who direct this bizarre school. I kid you not ... it really exists!
Play commences in the dorm where your chums Fiona and Cynthia join in your hunt. An exploration of the school shows that all exits are blocked. Only the Forbidden Door offers a way out. Escape from here can be managed through a special Use command built into the game which helps to get round the two word input system of the Quill. By using a pencil and then placing it in the keyhole you'll get the key ... there's slightly more to it than that but I shan't spoil your fun write to the Fat One next door if you're stuck.
The Secret of St Bride's is humorous, well written and full of odd connections. It is a tongue in cheek romp through the realms of Angela Brazil - if you like the sound of it you should send your £6.95 to St Bride's School, Ireland. The Games Mistresses tell me they may have a distributor soon - keen an eye out for it.
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Last, there's Crystal Quest from Pocket Money Software. This is a 100 location Quilled text adventure set in the world of Star Trek. The Earth is in serious danger and you must pilot your space craft where no man has gone before to find the three Crystals which will save the human race.
At the start you find yourself in the overheating engine room of the ship. The warp drive is due to malfunction so you have to race to the control room and warp out of Earth base, pronto. There are steering systems to be mastered - if you get your colour coding wrong you could be in dead trouble and end up in a completely wrong destination.
Once you have learned how to steer the ship, you will find a variety of planets to explore - some with hostile alien life and some with robotic systems to contend with. You can use a transporter beam to get down to those landfalls but remember to set the coordinates before you beam down.
Trekkies will like the game as will anyone who can only afford a small amount of cash to buy their software. At 99 pence the program is terrific value for money, and compares very favourably with a lot of games costing five times as much. Beam me up Scotty!
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