Blood of the Mutineers

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.