Reviews by Canalboy

This is another large and finicky Epic adventure with interminable dull paths and real-time elements; there are a whole host of winding underground tunnels and paths which need careful mapping. The number of redundant locations can't possibly have anything to do with making the game seem more attractive in the advertising of the day when room count was a major selling point. Oh dear me no.

The premise is that you find yourself on a country road next to a well after spinning a strange wheel you found lying in a country lane; to return to civilisation you must find 23 treasures and then...well, it should be fairly obvious.

There are umpteen ways of soft and hard locking yourself out of completion in this game so you must save in almost an anal fashion. Remember the lamp will burn in real time too so no dawdling or al fresco lamp lighting. Some exits are not clued so mapping is essential here; successful completion depends on not wasting precious lamp oil. It is not possible to refill your lamp as I eventually discovered, despite there being a large pool of oil in one location. Lubrication may be a prerequisite elsewhere.

The game has a number of split second timing decisions to make, mostly centering around when and where to interact with the various NPCs in the game as well as some one visit only areas. Discovering which objects to take with you into these areas and the order in which to visit them will inevitably lead to numerous reloads and restarts. The ten item inventory limit may sound ample but there are times when you will need to take that many items with you so there is no scope for getting it wrong.

The EPIC Operating system was co-written by the author together with D.M. Johnson and updated several times; while the parser in this game is not as sophisticated as the one in The Lost Crystal written three years later from the same stable I found it adequate and I didn't have much trouble in expressing my desire, with the exception of one set piece involving a farmer and a bull in a china shop. I came across not a single typo or other shrdlu which is refreshing.

As mentioned above there are a number of both obstructive and helpful NPCs including a policemen, a werewolf, a troll and a tramp who move across certain areas of the game map. As in many of the games from the seminal years there is ample scope for soft and hard locks, sometimes obvious straight away and sometimes not.

Squeezing 218 illustrated rooms into the 32K Beeb won't have been easy this side of Level 9 text compression techniques and overall the game is worth playing for the puzzles which are definitely the game's strong suit.

I played via the B-em emulator version 2.2 as I prefer the native font to the BeebEm program and upped the emulator speed to 300 per cent which gave smooth and fast game play sessions.

Remakes, flippin' remakes. Nicholas Cage in The Wicker Man? Bruce Willis in The Day Of The Jackal? No more questions, m'lud.

1981 was of course still a time when the text adventure was in its infancy. It was just five years since Colossal Cave hit the ARPANET and seven since Peter Langston's Wander lit its flickering light under the bushel of history. This review is based on the original and best version of Cranston Manor.

The games back then tended to be large, difficult and fantasy based and this game is certainly one of the best examples of the time. There is also a nice fricassee of James Bond thrown into the recipe for good measure. This first version was written for the North Star Horizon (a machine released in early 1977) by Larry Ledden and ported to the Atari as a text only game. A version for Dynacomp was written in MBASIC for CP/M in the summer of 1981 as well. A later version was written for Sierra On-Line which sacrificed textual depth, puzzle quality, story enforcement and atmosphere on the altar of the new text/graphical age.

It is unashamedly a "search the grounds and house of a long-dead eccentric and collect sixteen treasures" game but the muddy track of history had few tyre marks back then and the genre still works when done well.

As previously intimated there is a very well done denouement to the game when you penetrate the erstwhile owner's nerve center and the tension is upped as you suddenly play 007 dodging murderous tin soldiers and laser beams. This clever switch certainly kicks you out of your comfort zone after pottering about the mansion fiddling with ropes and desks.

The somewhat primitive two word parser understands about 130 words but I can think of only one place where I struggled to phrase my intentions in a way that didn't seem cuddly to the parser. The descriptions are very well done, often long and evocative making full use of the space afforded by a disk game without lapsing into dime novel territory. I particularly like the layout of the town near the manor which you have to traverse before the main game begins inside the manor - this certainly adds to the immersive feel of being alone in the city. This naturalistic idea was insensitively removed from the later version.

There are rather novel ways of recharging your lantern and the droid which you control (a unique conceit for the time) although I believe these clever innovations are also lacking in the Sierra rehash.

Much of the game is open from the start although there are a few hidden passages and locked doors; my favourite conceits in these kind of games. There is also an inventory limit of eight objects but as the map is fairly quickly traversed this is only a minor irritation and the game isn't top heavy with portable items anyway. The 134 locations seem somehow smaller to me and this is probably a tribute to the logistical planning that went into the map by the author. There are also none of those "traipsing along an identical rocky path for twelve moves" type of wearisome conceits that some software houses of the time demanded in an effort to flab out the size of their games.

I played via the Altirra emulator v 4.21 as the 4.30 version seemed to crash in enhanced text mode.

We've all done it - bumping into someone for the first time in years and barely clocking them but there are still some immutable features that we instantly recognise. And so it is with this half-remembered relic of Crowther's original.

I grabbed the executable for this via DropBox and I was pleasantly surprised. I was expecting a near exact copy of Colossal Cave but instead it is quite an interesting spin-off; yes it has a wellhouse and a grate and other plagiaristic nods to the original but most of the locations and puzzles are original and well done. Surprisingly XYZZY and the rest of the canonical commands aren't recognised.

It does have the traditional very nasty "maze of twisty passages, all alike" which must be thoroughly mapped lest you miss an item. It also has evidence of being unfinished as you can move through a door and be greeted with "Colossal Cavern is under construction in this area. Please return to this location at a later date for interesting Adventures."

You can however still attain 500 out of 500 points.

In common with games this venerable the two word parser can be annoying but at least it understands GET ALL and VERBOSE and you can save multiple games without the game exiting immediately afterwards.

It does ratchet up the difficulty level from Crowther's original but still falls short of the Phoenix games in terms of hardness.

On the whole I enjoyed this game; I like Dian's games in general but this one ratchets up the story and the atmosphere as you progress while containing some very devious puzzles. It has a much better back story than Dian's Castle Elsinore for instance which was written just afterwards.

There is a steep augmentation in puzzle difficulty towards the end and you have to pay particular attention to character motivation and the back history of your (and others) erstwhile existence to logically solve the last section. There is a jaw dropping moment when you enter a certain location and find out who you are. Dian's skills as an author stand her in good stead here over the 170 odd locations in the game; it is not easy melding a treasure hunt with a Phantom Of The Opera style story but this is one of the better hybrids that I have played.

On the down side there are a few bugs including my bug bear of a non-described ordinal exit and a creature that can be slain but upon returning to the scene of the battle is dead yet still alive (no, not like Leonard Cohen). The knife wielding maniacs become tiresome after their third or fifth appearance as well. I also encountered a couple of parser struggles but in a game this size and with only a two word parser this is excusable and I found the right synonym after a few attempts in both instances. There are a number of magic words and transportation locations to save on lamp time which is generously dished out at 1000 moves. And in keeping with its reverential nods to Crowther and Woods there is a last lousy point which makes more sense than in the original. Just be on your toes or you'll miss the boat.

The inventory limit is predicated on weight not number of objects which is of course more realistic but the short cuts to the more far flung reaches of the game mean that it is never too onerous a task to pick up an object dropped earlier through overload. There is the game's equivalent of the thieving pirate but you have to let him steal from you at least once to glean all the treasures.

Add a couple of small but navigable mazes and this should keep you busy for a good few days.

I have just finished play testing Derek Haslam's new version of this game for RISC OS emulators. Thirty-nine years after the original Acornsoft version was released the author has extensively rewritten and expanded the game into a highly entertaining 296 room odyssey to claim the magical Talisman of Khoronz and return with it to Carraway Court (together with various assorted plunder you have accumulated along your quixotic way). Freeing himself from the memory shackles of the old 32K BBC the programmer has been able to produce a much more interesting and absorbing experience.
I have seldom played a text adventure which has the almost perfect melding of back story and puzzle fest. Derek is a natural writer and the world of the island of Karos (together with sundry small islands scattered around its coast) is woven skilfully around the story of the wizard Khoronz and his battle against the evil Vork.

The game encompasses many regions, from snowy mountain passes to treacherous swamps (watch what you are wearing) and thick forest. A castle sitting on a remote island, a deep and hazardous coal mine traversing a large underground region and stone barrows containing hidden clues are all to be explored and the game also features many NPCs, both friendly and informative ones who will impart essential information, sell you essential items (the barter system is de rigueur in some cases) and sometimes kill you. There are volcanic eruptions, sea monsters, wolves and kobolds to deal with, together with the most original use for an anvil that I have ever come across. It is possible to circumnavigate the island of Karos on a craft and there are several landing spots but be careful as it is very easy to drown on needle rocks or be sucked into a whirlpool amongst other entry points to Davy Jones's Locker. You will need a certain amount of nautical know-how to manoeuvre the boat correctly.

One unusual facet of the game is movement. In the main part of the island the normal eight compass directions plus up and down and occasionally in and out are used but indoors and occasionally at the more far flung regions left, right, forwards and backwards are used. This took me a while to perfect but it actually works very well once you get your head around the logistical concept.

The game does feature a very generous lamp timer, a continually descending number of energy points (you start with 1000 and lose one for each move or occasionally more at sea) but these can be replenished in several ways. There are no thirst or hunger timers. I particularly like the lamp icon which appears in the top left hand corner of the screen to remind you if it is on or off.

The inventory limit is set at a very high number and realistically heavier objects are more difficult to carry; indeed one can only be dragged. Almost every item has at least one use so discard nothing. Occasionally you will receive a helpful message stating that an item is no longer needed after you have used it for a particular task.

I finally finished after approximately fifteen upgraded versions and amassed over a thousand points although there was one treasure I did not collect along the way.

The fully released final version will include an incremented hint system at certain locations where continually typing "hint" or "help" will give you clues of gradually increasing helpfulness. This function is likely to get a fair amount of use as the puzzles in the game are sometimes far from easy but always fair. I don't think that it is possible to put the game into an unwinnable state without the player being aware of the fact.
I would definitely advise creating a map as the island is so large you will get lost on more than one occasion and the layout may even suggest a problem solution or two.

I thoroughly recommend giving this Tolkienesque work a go. Details of where to download the game are available on CASA. It can also be downloaded from Derek's web site http://www.boulsworth.co.uk/intfict/index.htm

Cave of Blunders, sorry Wonders was written by Campbell Wild as a demonstration game for his new text adventure creation system Adrift in 1999. As an advertisement, it does for the creation of text adventures what the Titanic did for the sales of holidays on cruise ships.

There are many bugs both lurking and stinging you in the face here. An underwater section can be drained yet reappears as undrained thanks to no conditional flags being set. A bottle can be filled once but never again, despite there being ample quantities of filler left lying around. One section of the game disappears if you enter it and perform a certain action, for no apparent reason. The description of the area is replaced by the letter "x." Hmmmm. Taking a particular object requires "pluck" and does not recognise "pick" or "take" yet another similar object does not respond to "pluck." You get the general idea.

All this is a shame as without the huge amount of bugs (the game can still be finished but it is a pain) a nice medium sized treasure hunt would exist here. The puzzles are often clever and quite tough and there are several ways to soft lock the game if you make a wrong choice.

There are a few static NPCs and one wonderfully dreadful pun which would be quite happy in Quondam.

The two word parser will give you a real battle of "guess the verb" although many objects can be referred to. Very few synonyms are allowed so exact wording is required. The maximum score is 1000 points although I only managed to attain 970 but still found the treasure-filled cave, the object of my quest. The room descriptions are perfunctorily adequate without being memorable. The parser is too picky and very few alternative verbs are catered for which of course creates frustration. As if writing a set sized newspaper column three or four sentences cover most descriptions so it falls far short of a mystical atmosphere; utilitarian reference book rather than mystical novel. There are also plenty of ways to lock yourself out of victory and quite a few illogicalities too. The actual puzzles themselves are the reason to play the game; discovering multiple means of transportation and deciphering maps are done rather cleverly.

All in all if you would like to see what the Adrift environment has to offer try a Larry Horsman game instead.

I have not played many Apple II text adventures but having downloaded the AppleWin emulator recently I thought that I would chance my arm.

Windmere Estate is a traditional find the treasures and store them somewhere two word parser game which appears to be getting tougher the further I hack into it.

The diaphanous premise is that pirates stored their manifold booty in and around the grounds of the estate and you have the chance as usual to emulate Croesus by finding it all.

I initially had some parser issues as oddly entering certain objects in a room requires the syntax "open x" e.g. "open closet" will take you into said item. Examine doesn't work, neither do verbose or take all.

To start with the puzzles seemed childishly simple. Hmmm there are some rats in here and some rat poison nearby. Now what could possibly work? However, as I have penetrated the deeper recesses of the estate the difficulty quotient has inclined considerably. There is a closed vault door, a seemingly inaccessible dumbwaiter (Curses anyone?) and an organ upon which I can produce a cacophonous din but to no avail. One particular problem is caused by a parser infelicity however and I have no qualms in telling you that the portrait needs to be referred to as a picture. Nuff said.

As tradition dictates there are a number of secret passages and hidden rooms which gradually make traversing the large map (I have currently identified 93 rooms) easier.

I have so far accumulated 23 treasures but this only amounts to 230 out of the maximum attainable score of 415 so I still have some way to go.

There is a HINT option which nudged me towards the painting / picture solution but generally speaking you are on your own as this seems to work in very few locations.

You can at least recharge your flashlight at a certain location an infinite amount of times and there are no hunger or thirst daemons. Moving in the dark is usually fatal through injury or at the teeth of a vampire bat. Multiple deaths abound but there are few soft locks so far.

This is worth a look if you are an old school fan and don't mind drawing a map and watching your points tally slowly increment.

Stop Press - I would like to apologise to the author Dennis N Strong for my previous observation regarding the rat poison; the problem is actually more devious than I had hitherto believed.

CJ Coombs Adventure 200 can hold its head high amongst its peers; most of them will have had much more memory to utilise and develop a coherent story even if all that underpins them is "explore a strange land and collect the king's missing treasures."

The 220 odd locations in here seem well connected and believable, and the author manages to wring a fair amount of atmosphere out of the necessarily short room descriptions.

The game is very easy to soft lock as certain objects, once picked up can not be put down again. As there is a fair amount of sneaking past guards involved it is often necessary to leave a tempting item where it is until you stumble upon a scenario where you might need it.

There are some beautiful set piece puzzles contained herein; one involving entering a firedamp filled mine and having to both find a way to start a machine that clears the gas then later turning it on again to thwart a pursuer is worthy of the Phoenix mainframe boys at Cambridge.

Choreographing the correct order in which to tackle the rather difficult puzzles is half the fun here.

The game is stuffed with mazes both great and small. You could argue there are eight although only one is very large. Dropping objects to map them works very well.

Mercifully there is no lamp timer or inventory limit which is refreshing to see in a game from 1982.

Oddly DESCRIBE works to glean more information about an item rather than EXAMINE.

All in all I would thoroughly recommend this tricky but fun treasure hunt. I also came across zero misspellings and grammatical mistakes.

A mere forty years after it was released and the prize was claimed (a wonderfully anal Ring of Power and a rather more materialistic sum of money to buy BBC computer products) I too have claimed the Ring of Power and returned it to the wizard.

To be more exact, Castle of Riddles was written by Peter Killworth of Cambridge University Oceanography and Philosopher's Quest fame as the first text adventure competition game; this started something of a trend. Released in February 1983 via Acornsoft although written in 1982 this is regarded as a real toughie of the old skool and so it is.

The plot, such as it is, involves you, a down-on-your-luck adventurer, returning the above mentioned ring to a wizard after it was stolen by an evil warlock. Any treasures you find on your wanderings can be kept for your own avaricious ends up to a maximum of 250 points.

Although compact in size to fit into the 32K memory constraints of the BBC microcomputer the game requires much careful pencil and paper planning and the ability to cope with frustration levels racheted up to 11 on the "bugger it I've screwed up" amplifier.

There are three main areas to the game which are all reached via shimmering curtains of light (Bank of Zork anyone?) and can all only be entered once so the choreography of play is extremely strict. One area contains a well and the three bears minus Goldilocks although there is a hilarious picture of her, another contains a nasty jet-black maze and a shooting gallery and the third a tricky corridor of doom. Choose the wrong entrance and you have softlocked the game potentially very early on. Only much repeated play will reveal the correct order to tackle the regions in. There is also a very nasty trick around the metal rod which has two essential uses. Unfortunately to solve the first one of them involves using it in a way that loses it permanently which makes the second use of the rod impossible. The only way to get around this is to solve the first rod-related puzzle, make a note of your findings and restart. All should then become clear. Obstacles like this would never of course be encountered in modern adventures but back then they were as accepted as norms; patience was as valuable a commodity as deduction.

In Killworth's traditional manner the majority of the puzzles are difficult but logical; one of them involves looking at two ostensibly similar objects but being able to glean a subtle difference between them; there are several beautiful chaining puzzles which require exact timing and unsurprisingly two innovative mazes neither of which can be solved by merely dropping objects. The solutions to the mangled cushion and antique clock problems are two of my all-time favourites.

There is naturally a lamp timer although this can be recharged once and isn't as tight as in some games of this vintage and an inventory limit which is generous enough not to be too much of an issue. Moving in the dark is nearly always fatal. The only NPCs encountered are of the potentially fatal variety so shoot first metaphorically speaking and ask questions afterwards.

The parser is of the old two word variety but in all honesty is quite sufficient for game play and naturally no examine command, something that I know Killworth felt strongly passionate about. Descriptions are of medium length generally and all in upper case white on black. I played via the excellent Beebem emulator which enables you to double the original speed of the game.

All in all a nice wallow in cerebral nostalgia.

Despite the author's name at the top of this particular game it seems to have been written by Dian Crayne, a prolific science fiction and text adventure author who released several games in the early eighties under the Temple and Norell Data Systems software labels.

Most of the games use a structure akin to the old Colossal Cave game, with a thief (masquerading as a swordsman here) a pirate (a seaman in this particular game) several mazes and randomised combat, in this case noblemen instead of dwarves. Keep on the move and you should be able to avoid any bloodletting on your part.

Castle Elsinore was the last of Dian's games and probably the best. Some others like Granny's Place are unfinishable because of bugs.

The version I played came from 1983 although there is an archived version from 1992.

The quest takes you back to Shakespearean England in 1602 and your task is to collect sixteen treasures while placating various members of the Royal Family and solving a tightly timed endgame.

Mapping is essential as the forest in particular zig zags all over the place and the gardens and cellars are similarly disorientating. It weighs in at over a hundred locations and the descriptions are quite compelling in places. As you solve puzzles, different areas of the castle become linked by hidden passages and moving walls. My particular favourite here is the secret passageway from the King's Chamber to the Maid's Quarters.

You will meet the guilt-ridden King Claudius, a depressed Hamlet, a quidnunc Polonius, what is left of Yorick (alas!) and the Queen amongst other characters. They are however pretty one-dimensional and really only serve as human locked doors to standard puzzles. You also have to commit an act of manslaughter against an individual.

The game has a fairly large inventory limit and a lamp timer, although it can be refilled and should not present a problem.

The hardest puzzles come right at the end, one involving a time delay and another solving an obscure riddle.

I came across a few bugs but nothing that made the game unfinishable. The shopkeeper appears to change sex (although that seems acceptable nowadays!) the SWEEP and CLEAN commands elicit a blank parser response and items dropped in the castle mysteriously reappear in the crotch of a tree in the forest but can't be taken from there. I only came across one object which doesn't seem to play a role in the game.

I played via DOSBox-X which has scope for ten saved game slots and these are necessary as you are likely to die at the tip of a nobleman's sword more than once.

It took me about seven hours playing time to complete and I enjoyed it although as an inveterate map maker that's not surprising. I have only played one other of Dian's games, namely Hermit's Secret and I found Castle Elsinore to be rather easier.