Ratings and Reviews by Canalboy

This spy caper from the early nineties has an interesting premise but is let down badly by non-intuitive puzzle solutions, an exasperatingly intractable CAC, sorry GAC parser and arthritically slow response times even with the occasional graphics switched off (type "graphics" or "text" to toggle.)

The premise is that you have awoken in a dimly lit cellar armed with nothing but a lit candle (which amazingly never goes out whatever you do or however long you take to do it) and a vague recollection of being a superspy on your biggest assignment ever. Upon making your exit from the cellar you find yourself in a snow-laden town with only a handful of locations to initially visit. This is the kind of game where you solve puzzles one by one rather than being able to pick and mix; as a result it is very easy to get bogged down when the latest non sequitur problem stumps you and believe me there are lots of them. The ending was quite amusing but I don't think I'll be playing another William Quinn game for a while. It is more Basildon Bond than James Bond. The parser is also limited in scope and the endless "You Can't" responses to perfectly valid commands quickly become tedious. There are precious few if any synonyms available; to give one inexcusable example of the sloppy coding, you find an overcoat but the game doesn't understand the word "overcoat" only "coat." There are other similar examples.

The terse descriptions and several NPCs that you can't talk to do not help to create any kind of taut, espionage-like atmosphere and the forty odd locations are all described in a utilitarian fashion. I kept with it as there was at least some kind of story developing but it doesn't really amount to much in the end. The crude and sporadic pictures bring nothing to the party neither. Add the static, taciturn NPCs and the resulting mix is anything but heady. The low inventory limit is exacerbated by the slow speed of the game. TAKE ALL, OOPS and any kind of verbal interaction with the other characters that you meet are missing, which you would think would be a bit of a problem to a superspy. Each puzzle is like a fence in a horse race; fail to solve it and you're going nowhere. Even more annoying is the balloon which cannot be referred to after it has been inflated and if you attempt to use a certain container more than once you cannot ever drop it again so it just gums up your inventory for the rest of the game. Many legitimate actions won't work except in one carefully designated location which makes you think you're barking up the wrong tree with your attempted solution and a lot of the puzzle solutions don't make sense. The solutions to problems like gaining access to the cinema (why can you go in past the ticket booth without a ticket but not past a tramp walking about?) avoiding being killed when going to sleep and creating the right scenario to be able to watch the film all make no sense to me. The strange tree problem, the eight sided cabinet (whose existence is never explained) the sleep problem and the film problem are similarly surreal in the solution and I ended up solving problems by brute forcing them. A car jack won't work anywhere logically so I just wandered around the map trying it on every meta object until it worked on something incongruous; this isn't a very fulfilling way of playing these games. The rocketbelt would have been more fun if it had worked in more than one area. I can't in all honesty recommend this; if you want to play a decent spy caper try the Rick Hanson trilogy by Robico.

Blood Of The Mutineers was to be the first in a projected trilogy of text only games with Captain Blizzard as the protagonist; a barnacled follow up to the previous Rick Hanson secret agent trilogy from the same Robico stable. As the eighties drew to a close, however (this game was released in 1988) and the market for text adventures waned and then died, the plug was pulled on the mooted sequels. So definitely not a case of "One Two Three O'Leary."

The game is around half the size of previous Robico offerings and the difficulty quotient is higher as well - the very start of the game features a frenetic, tightly-timed set piece involving Blizzard's egress from a mutinous crew and you will most certainly die many times before plotting a successful escape. This and other timed action sequences require much plotting and learning by death, in the accepted manner of the time.

The game comprises four specific areas, each of which cannot be revisited after leaving although the limitless inventory capability prevents this from being a particularly galling problem.

The parser is adequate if you adhere to two word verb/noun input but often becomes confused when attempting anything more sophisticated; "put x on y" will, for instance just drop the referenced item in most instances and prepositions in general are usually but not always ignored. There is one particular command which is needed to elude the black bear that is far too distanced from any other parser requirement in the game as to be unfair. The location description also offers no suggestion that the requisite action would work. Robico often seemed to work one extremely torturous puzzle in each of their games (c.f. the sleeping guard in Island Of Xaan). Several of the puzzles are multi-faceted and tough; again as above you are expected to die and learn several times and a few items have moon logic uses. These instances inevitably walk the tightrope between being fresh puzzle ideas and downright "how was I supposed to know that?" out of left field contrivances. The puzzle mentioned above involving the bear is in my opinion unfair even if it is also quite elegant; more of a nudge from the location description would have been welcomed and the valedictory verb at the end of the game to summon your rescuers is unique to me in the pantheon of text adventures. Another puzzle revolving around a rope bridge will be familiar to those of you who have played the mainframe game Hezarin. The denouement in the Temple appears somewhat rushed (quite possibly due to memory restraints) and the game as a whole does not achieve the burgeoning tension of the company's earlier Rick Hanson trilogy when building towards the climax.

There is no "score" although "take all" and "og" for go back one command are present;the latter however doesn't work if you die. Presumably dying would be one the main reasons for employing it. Unusually there is a "where" command which will tell you the location of a previously dropped object and as in all other Robico games "examine all" will parse a catalogue of all your inventory items as well as meta objects in the current location description. The location descriptions are more detailed than previous games from the O'Leary Brothers and this is I suspect the main reason the number of locations are only half the number of the earlier adventures. A typical example: "The Captain looked around. He was outside the entrance to the Temple. The building was perfectly carved in the shape of a skull. The teeth were beside him and looking past the ivy which trailed from the nasal opening, he could see two, large eye sockets, black and menacing! The only exit was west to the chasm edge." Shades of Level 9's Dungeon Adventure and Talent System's Lost Kingdom Of Zkul there. Anyone of a squeamish nature may find some of the prose too lurid to stomach as the grand guignol is splattered on rather too copiously, somewhat akin to a Dario Argento giallo film.

I think "Nasty" rather than "Cruel" would best describe the player experience as there is no inventory limit and there are no thirst, hunger, or light daemons. It is however very easy to miss an essential item and not be able to backtrack to retrieve it as the four main areas are, as previously mentioned, self contained. One item in particular which you have already used and presumed lost is hidden away at the start of a new section; if you miss it second time around you will be close to the end but unable to finish. Examine and map everything very carefully.

I can't honestly say I enjoyed this game as much as the Rick Hanson trilogy. There are far too many gruesome deaths and blood splattered descriptions and the last part comes across as rushed hack work. It is a shame that Robico couldn't have released this as a disk based game with less gore and more of a thrilling climax. I clocked up BeebEm to 200 per cent CPU speed and it runs very quickly with nary a misspelling or bug to report.

The Island is the fourth Ken Bond game I have tried; The Test and The Base are both two parters and I couldn't access the second halves using ZEsarUX. This game, however is all of a piece and a rather good puzzlefest with a World War 2 back story.

You start up against the clock in attempting to escape a sinking steamer before it disappears beneath the briny. You should have ample time to explore and assemble your escapee trousseau. Upon reaching terra firma you explore and get wind of an old World War 2 base and poke around amongst the German memorabilia and the island's natural features. There are some clever object manipulation puzzles here and some reusing of items in off the wall ways. Oh and a traditional "drop items to map" maze as well.

An old beached U-boat, a very strange statue and an annoying parrot all feature. Polly want a bullet in his beak then?

As for the parser, The PAW system is well exploited here and Ken has managed to avoid player frustrations by and large. Synonyms are generally well catered for. There are quite a few misspellings, sloppy grammar mistakes and phantom speech marks but nothing game breaking there. Whether they were also in the MIA Spectrum 128K version I don't know. Some object flags are not reset after they have changed condition; for instance a certain dead animal is still described as alive after its demise. There are quite a few instances of this kind of illogicality. There is also an unrealistic puzzle involving a weapon that can only be used at a certain time without killing you. This is an awkward contrivance.

The descriptions are quite lengthy in places and Ken obviously has a profound knowledge of nautical terminology (I never knew that "heads" were the crews' toilets for example). You sink and learn.

There is no "score", "oops" or "verbose" but I didn't miss them. And I particularly like the way the author lovingly describes the full features and model type of the various tools/weapons/machines featured throughout the game. This is a trope in all Ken's games.

The feeling of panic as a landlubber caught aboard a sinking ship is pretty well done as you don't initially know how long you have got before you cop a whack of salt water, but I relaxed a bit when I saw that Ken has included a user friendly time frame. The mood switch from boat to island and memories of World War 2 is quite well done. The last section with a lamp timer is not as pulse quickening as it might have been as you can move in the dark even up and down stairs. There are a couple of rather tough puzzles here using objects in surreal ways and a few sudden deaths/soft and hard locks too. You lose most of your inventory when reaching the island so the inventory limit only really becomes an issue right at the end. There is also a particularly nasty puzzle involving a snake (Willie Crowther where are you?) I initially thought I'd solved it in the correct manner but later realised I had used up an object I needed later on. You'll know it if you play it. You can lose a vital item in several places but this is always obvious at the time. As mentioned moving in the dark is always non-fatal which is a welcome change. There are a few too many "look under," "look behind" etc. hidden objects. The additional power of PAW over GAC perhaps inevitably meant that this conceit would be somewhat overused. A bit like the annoying underwater cameras in Thunderball; we've got some new features so we're going to use 'em regardless of context. There are a few clever problems involving assembling equipment and disarming booby traps together with unusual object manipulation.

I enjoy Ken's games and it is a shame he only wrote five of them. They remind me very much of Jack Lockerby's efforts.

Castle Warlock was the third of five games written by the admirable Ken Bond; it is one of the best examples of the castle/dungeon romp genre that I have come across. The plot (such as it is) has you on a horny handed expedition to loot the castle of the evil wizard Danzil and make it home in time for tea. Put the kettle on mother. Tragedy unfortunately strikes your expedition before the pot is on the trivet as your guide shuffles off this mortal coil during a storm and you are left to fend for yourself. A lengthy odyssey awaits you and a blissfully graphics free one to boot.

The PAW parser was much feted at the time and Ken makes full use of its envelope pushing potential here. TAKE ALL is available although there is no OOPS or BACK. All descriptions are at their lengthiest from the get go, so no toggling VERBOSE, BRIEF etc. is required. EXAMINE and SEARCH are both on the menu although utilisation produces the same result. The handling of multiple keys never caused me a problem as it has in the past for instance. Look after the disambiguation and the rest will follow. PAW has enabled the author to pen longer and more evocative decriptions and while they are not up to a Meretzky or Austin standard the atmosphere engendered is still above par.

There are numerous sudden death scenarios and it is also extremely easy to hard and soft lock the game; it should be obvious in each case soon after the specific faux pas however. Learning through suffering was of course a great part of early text adventures and perfectly okay by me. If you dislike that kind of game you would do well to avoid any Ken Bond production. As hitherto mentioned the lamp timer is extremely generous and there no other daemons to worry about. There are some old fashioned and some rather original posers in here; more than one requires some lateral thinking. I particularly liked the iron chest and paint problems.

There are a few bugs but these are cosmetic; several changes in room object statuses do not change when they should; conditional flags are obviously not being reset in these instances but there are not many of them and none are game breaking. Spelling and grammar are top notch throughout.

To summarise whilst this traditional fantasy effort is not up to Infocom or Level 9 standards it is a better then average sword and sandal romp. Just save a lot.

This is the second of the Rick Hanson trilogy and is another excellent offering from the O'Leary stable. This time Rick is sent to steal some secret plans to prevent the enemy creating a particle beam accelerator or something (or was it an everlasting light bulb?). I never was very good at Physics or Chemistry.

At any rate Rick is the lad for the job again and you find yourself dripping wet on a beach dressed like Jacques Cousteau after being beached by the submersible equivalent of Calypso (is that John Denver I hear in the background?) The usual tension laden story spins out before you: exploding trunks; ominously swooping helicopters; a psychotic guard dog and coded newspaper articles await our go to espionage man as he travels through a meandering village, a confusing forest and a mine-laden beach with guard dogs snapping at his twinkling feet.

The parser is adequate rather than envelope pushing and the game uses the proprietory MIDGE compression system which crams a quart of words into a 32K BBC pint pot. I occasionally had problems knowing whether a verb was genuinely not understood at all or needed a transitive object to be understood; one such example occurred on the rocky pinnacle towards the climax of the game. Multiple commands on one line are theoretically parseable but in my experience they often cause more trouble than they are worth. Examining an object often produces a description followed by a default "you see nothing special." Stick to the basic two or three word commands would be my suggestion. Synonyms are often ok e.g. "paper" and "newspaper" are both accepted. UNDO, SCORE and VERBOSE are all missing but EXAMINE ALL is unusually and usefully available although I found that the full list of results sometimes disappeared off the top of the screen when using the B-Em emulator when more than seven or eight items were examinable at any one time. The MIDGE compressor, allied with Mr. O'Leary's excellent prose style and story book imagination have helped to create a very well-written and pulse quickening espionage game. There is seldom less than six lines of descriptive text through approximately 210 locations and often a lot more but the output never feels flabby. By way of contrast some of the paths and roads run across more locations than is strictly necessary but this scarcely dilutes the tautness of the action, so well written is the game. The dry mouthed moments when Rick stares danger in the face manage to stay on the right side of farce; Rick is more Sean Connery than Roger Moore and there are no fourth wall destroying winks to the crowd. I would have settled for "nasty" rather than "cruel" for the overall player experience if it wasn't for one completely motivationless action which needs to be performed in the winding lanes of Witherton village; I tried it out of a sense of mischief and was very surprised to find that the result was in fact essential for completion of the game. Do you remember Ray Steven's hit record in 1974? No, not Misty; that was '75...

Unusually for a Robico game there are three mazes and the village maze is a colossal pain in the lane. There are considerably fewer objects than locations and I had to continually map and save, map and restore and gradually join up the many similar locations. The other two mazes both have hints to help you find a way through without the need to fully map them but the first of these (the forest) requires a somewhat odd interpretation of the clock face (to me, anyway). You may also get stuck for something to do in places as it is the kind of game where not solving a particular problem can stop you dead in your tracks.

As usual for Robico there are no light/hunger/thirst/time daemons or inventory barriers to worry about and quite rightly so. Who enjoys a meal in a restaurant when you can only book the table for an hour?

This isn't the kind of game with a puzzle in every room; rather it is a thumping good spy yarn where the (mostly excellent) puzzles integrate holistically with the plot. My personal favourite is the guard dog problem; I was stuck for ages at this point, then had one of those eureka moments. It is a very clever two part puzzle and involves lateral thinking when manipulating an item in your inventory then working out where to use it. Apart from the aforementioned moon logic puzzle in the village all the solutions are I believe fair and logical. There are code puzzles, pursuit puzzles and Grizzly Adams type puzzles to scratch your head over.

Skullduggery is a pretty obscure piece of revenge horror written initially in C for the Apple II by the author then later revised and released in DOS; there are two versions out there, both from 1989. The one with the October date mark is the one to plump for.

It would make the top ten of several personal text adventure taxonomies: hardest games; most atmospheric offerings; best horror scenarios. It may have helped being English as the game is set in Southeast England in the eighteenth century days of smuggling.

You start off, like so many games, in a forest and the opening section is a race against time to find a light source before dark. This isn't the kind of game that gives you any purchase when moving in the dark. Even entering a dark room from a light one it's Goodnight Vienna.

As you explore the ghost-riddled mansion (there are many effective random messages pertaining to the undead) you can discover various writings which will hopefully point you in the direction of your quest. The gradual unfolding of the family history of the Leominsters and Bradys reminded me very much of the revision you undertake in Curses and The Mulldoon Legacy to discover the family skeletons, both literal and metaphorical.

David Jewett is a very effective writer and I found the backstory fascinating. It isn't often you get a happy melding of puzzlefest (assemble the ingredients for a potion) and narrative (strong familial plot line) but I think he pulls it off admirably here.

It is a large game containing more than 100 locations and many objects to manipulate but the size doesn't feel bloated just for the sake of gasconnade (I'm looking at you Epic Adventures). The parser accepts full sentences in some cases but there is no OOPS or UNDO. PUT X ON Y is not the same as PUT X IN Y and the difference is important in a couple of places. You can use TAKE ALL, DROP ALL and VERBOSE. There are no scoring or light or hunger/thirst daemons which can only be a good thing. EXAMINE is available.

I did sometimes struggle to carry out certain actions which were obvious prerequisites i.e. the parser doesn't understand FILL but you need to carry liquids in more than one container in the course of the game. PUT X in Y does the trick however. I also hit a disambiguation problem relating to the two notes in the game. My advice is don't read or take the butler's note until you have found the other one or you will not be able to read both. There are synonyms available for some objects.

The game's major selling point is an above average back story. The horror theme is cloyingly omnipresent here, whether in a dusty old attic or the middle of a forest clearing. Ghosts and the undead stalk indoors and outdoors here and close encounters are very often of the "bugger I've been beheaded" kind:
"A chill descends. Suddenly a shimmering white light in the shape of a man seems to step out from nowhere. As you watch, the shape glares back at you. The ghost's lips are moving and it seems to be forming words; but no sound emerges."

Other random deaths occur at the teeth of a pack of wolfdogs or a poltergeist who hurls items of mansion furniture at you. Keep on the move!
Some of the descriptions are rather long but never long-winded and careful attention should be paid to architectural features as they carry a clue to a recurring puzzle inside the mansion. The map layout is a credible one with no computer rooms plonked down next to a mangrove swamp for example. This helps to heighten the tension.

It must be said that this is a ball-breakingly difficult challenge. Some of the clues carried in the various bits of paper, parchments etc. are quite obtuse and it took me a long time to work out what to do with the bodies that can be moved around the map, although mercifully there aren't many opportunities to make the thing unwinnable without realising it. The transportation system was the single biggest impasse for me as the object(s) utilised for teleportation are not exactly obvious. You can also only pass once through the iron gate outside the mansion's grounds and working out how to get back subsequently requires very careful mapping of the environs; the solution is a very clever logistical puzzle. One novel and also welcome feature is an online map which occupies the left half of the screen.

The inventory limit is weight, not number based which adds to the feeling of authenticity and requires working out what to take on specific sorties and what to leave back at base. One annoyance is the random closing of doors when you enter rooms; there are many of them and constantly having to re-open them becomes tedious after a while.

There was apparently a hint system available from the author for $10 which provided you with a decoder to type for instance CLUE X to find out the use of a particular item or room. As this was first offered 36 years ago I somehow doubt it is still possible to get it.

I had a problem restoring saved positions via DOSBox-X until I upgraded the version to the latest and the problem went away. You can also save up to ten positions (0-9) with the SAVE command. There aren't an enormous number of puzzles given the size of the map but they are often rather clever and often rather obscure as previously intimated. Some of the potion ingredients that need to be garnered require very careful reading of items and room descriptions; small anatomical/architectural details are sometimes essential to progress and easy to miss. There are also several red herrings scattered throughout the game. Finding the links between the various diaries/parchments etc. found and physical objects is not always easy; experimentation is the name of the game. As mentioned the logistical puzzle around finding a way back to the mansion after visiting the forest is very clever and likewise the exportation of an object back from where you find it to the room where you need it is also well-developed.

Unfortunately this is one of those games where you can come to a sudden halt if stymied by certain puzzles. Don't be afraid to drink anything you can lay your hands on bu the way!

I really enjoyed Skullduggery although I can't in all honesty recommend it to adventuring neophytes; indeed many gnarled and cynical adventurers (like myself) will struggle in certain places too. It is a very polished and clever game but you won't be finishing it quickly.

Dr. Terror's House Of Horrors is the largest game in John R. Olsen's trilogy of horror games collectively entitled Nightmare From The Crypt. It has all the usual hallmarks of his genre: compact size; timer; many puzzles; two word parser and excellent presentation both grammatically and typographically.

The aim of the game is to collect the ten keys of virtue and escape from the Doctor's horror museum intact. Many of the rooms contain a waxwork interpretation of a gruesome scene from history (for example there is an Americana Wing featuring a Wild West hanging and a Louisiana Bayou monster). There is the odd real horror element thrown into the mix which works rather well and tends to shake you out of your "it's all made of wax" lethargy.

The starting puzzle in the cell with the closing walls is of course a well-worn trope; I can remember it being used in Will Hay's wonderful film The Ghost Of St. Michael's back in 1941.

Several of the keys are very easy to come across but four or five are more tricky and procuring the lead key in particular is quite a hard chaining conundrum.

The two word parser is adequate as the game doesn't really need to push the lexicographical envelope. There is no "oops" or "take all" and no score neither. There are no bugs here as such and scarcely any misspellings although as an Englishman I had to remember the U.S. spellings (aluminum instead of aluminium for example).

I like the green on black display that is the default for DOSBox-X. Synonyms are sometimes available ("axe" as well as "battleaxe" for example).

The room descriptions are generally of short to perhaps medium length and fairly evocative. John has essayed a wide variety of clichéd horror tropes from a guillotining (sadly without the old lady tricoteuses) in revolutionary France to an extra-terrestrial tentacled monster. Blood, skulls, other mementos mori and the usual panoply of grand guignol impedementa abound.

Occasional random messages flash up such as "a soft giggling emanates from somewhere" and "you hear a creaking floorboard nearby. Is there someone else in here?" These are quite effective in augmenting the spooky feel of your surroundings.

Soft locks are I think completely absent. There are various ways to kill yourself but none are unfair. If you choose to enter a pit filled with live scorpions then you can probably guess your fate. The inventory limit is a bit of a pain but given the compact size of the game a silo for dumping all your objects is never far away, even on the peripheries of the map.

There is no light source but a thirst daemon is invoked; this only becomes a problem after many, many moves. One drink and it never reappears. You initially have no idea how to escape from the museum but an NPC will appear and fill you in about halfway through your odyssey.

Some puzzles consist of nothing more layered than "pull lever" while a few are quite clever. The puzzle(s) pertaining to the acquisition of the lead key are the hardest I think. There is one wanton act of vandalism which I originally eschewed trying as an act of Luddism being the solution seemed too unlikely; you will recognise this when you confront it. I liked the old fashioned moviola machine in which you can insert quarters and watch films containing clues to the game.

This is a game of easy to medium difficulty and would be a good choice for an adventuring newcomer.

The time travel dream-as-narrative has, of course a long and distinguished history in literature - H.G. Wells, Charles Dickens and J.B. Priestley (if you haven't read the latter's play Time And The Conways I thoroughly recommend it) being just three authors to pontificate on its effects on a small scale and a consequential universal level; tiny ripples in the time stream can have tsunami-like consequences. In J. Robinson Wheeler's imagining of this trope tall oaks do indeed from little acorns grow; literally and figuratively.

The game plays out over several interconnected yet discrete time zones, each overlapping and striving to exert influence over each other. Much experimentation and juxtaposition of locations within these worlds is necessary to influence and move the excellent back story on (or back, if you see what I mean).

Much like Curses (there is even a tourist map of Paris included as an homage) the catalyst for this vast historical triage is prosaic and seemingly innocuous; you have mislaid your front door key after returning home from a trip to the local library where you borrowed a book about time travel. A quick shifty of your immediate surroundings unearths a key but, of course, not the one you were looking for. Cue a saga of time machines, corporate behemoths sweeping away the rural arcadia of your home town, corporate takeovers and crystal grottoes, architects and antique merchants. You ultimately have the power of fate over more than one character in the game.

Appropriately for the intricate and multi-faceted gameplay there are several different endings possible, as well as an easter egg and multiple solutions to several of the problems that you will encounter.

The author has done his best to make an exceedingly complex coding exercise as user friendly as possible, although it is still possible to render the game unfinishable in quite a few ways. Save often and remember to amass the winding inventory in an obvious central hub location for easy access; this should be axiomatic once said location is discovered.

As in games like Anchorhead, the narrative is automatically advanced in (sometimes large) screen dumps when certain tasks are completed. If you find yourself stuck, try leaping around the eras and see if anything has changed since your last visit. The central storage silo is a very welcome constituent in an extremely kinetic work; this is a game which was harder to code than it is to play; that is just as it should be.

If I am being picky Wheeler's world view and political leanings are trowelled on a bit too thickly in places but this is a minor quibble. No-one could accuse Wells of letting his political light flicker under a bushel, after all.

I found almost no instance (perhaps with the exception of the lack of insert) where I had to play hunt the verb/noun. Meta objects are almost all examinable. I did manage to find a couple of bugs (one involving wheeling a barrow) and a handful of typos but this is a very well-groomed piece indeed. Unusually, there a few very strong NPCs with whom you will need to interact; indeed the gleaning and passing of knowledge will be essential to your ultimate triumph. One optional piece of philanthropy near the end is very satisfying too.

Given the pedigree of the author the descriptions are predictably top notch. Unpretentiously evocative writing is a difficult skill to master, sway too far one way and you can end up creating a lurid penny dreadful; too far the other way and things can seem too surgical, too literal; this one manages to land perfectly between two stools.

Several of the puzzles herein garnered awards and award nominations. Almost none are unfair although one or two are hard to swallow logically. Complex chaining puzzles which wax and wane through the ages are dealt with adroitly. This is a masterful work which can hold its own against any of the great text adventures. It won't be a wrench (or, indeed, a spanner) to play it.