Ratings and Reviews by Nomad
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Technically interesting. , December 5, 2021C64 only. A slightly obscure commercial game, didn't get much attention back when it was published, which was in 1985.
The game throws you right into the pit. Probably pardonable, let's assume the original game featured some sort of instructions. You can find some blurb on the web: Free the king's daughter from an evil magician.
Designwise the game is pretty horrible. The rooms are generic and don't even try to form something like a game world. The two-word parser is stubborn. The puzzles are not blended into the action. The typography is one big mess, looks a little like noone ever proofread the (commercial!) game.
On the plus side the game has a few surprises up the sleeves. It's just one file so it's limited to 64k of memory. Probably a tape release. It features graphics and music(!), so there's almost no memory left for the game and parser antics, right? Wrong! The map is rather large, you control two characters (although you can't switch at will), and you can command an NPC (a walking tree, of all sorts). The puzzles, as randomly thrown onto the map as they are, are associative and thus not too difficult, yet somewhat rewarding.
Not recommended for people used to sophisticated parsers of the Inform age. If you have witnessed and enjoyed the 8-bit era, or if you have a weird interest in how adventures looked like before the invention of upright walking, you might want to give this one a brief look.
Awesome, November 27, 2021The 1950's in the Caribbean: A steamy, exotic setting, politically overheated, vivid and emotional. You're a spy, not by conviction but because of events that led to your current situation. A James-Bond-like setting, with a lot of jumping back and forth in the recent history of the fictitious country.
The story is on rails, there's little exploration beyond the location you're currently in. Implementation could be better, from typos to commands not understood. The vibes are awesome though. Infocom always claimed their games would be driven by the player's imagination. 1958 does right that, you feel like you're there. If there were more details, if there were more communication, this would be a gem and the reference title in the segment "early 20th century espionage thriller in the Caribbean". <3 <3 <3
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