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Review
Dan Gahlinger is to be congratulated on his memory in recreating this long lost old VAX mainframe program. It has a lot of potential as a large, old style puzzle fest if the game is properly tested and more items available to EXAMINE.
It is unfortunately very buggy. Examining an item often gives the description of a different item you may not have found yet. EXAMINE PLANK gives you the description of a plastic card for instance, and the white candle carries the description of a bar of soap.
THROW BOTTLE caused the game to crash with a run time error. There are also numerous typos throughout the descriptions.
The best part of the game is the maze, which is described as unmappable but contains hundreds of witty sayings and gnomisms from down the ages; everything from old Jewish Jokes to Woody Allen observations.
The version is displayed as 3.5 developmental and hopefully can be redone by the author.
Comments on this review
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That version was actually pre-1990, like mid-80s, written on a 486!
I've rewritten it and it seems to be ok, but I'm marking the new version
as "pre-beta" until it's been checked at least a bit.
There's been a lot of re-coding in the background over the years,
the game is now at version 20.0 !
Please try the new version posted on Sourceforge:
http://trek7.sourceforge.net/files/castle/
The Install EXE, RAR and ZIP are all the same, and include a setup.exe installer with full uninstall capabilities, plus it should create a desktop shortcut.
I've just added "plain" versions of the RAR and ZIP, which are just the files packed, no installer, no desktop shortcut, for those people who don't want to use a setup.exe method.
The linux version is just a plain tar/gz, no installer.
The linux version also contains the DOS newcast.exe which should allow you to run the game with dosemu, dosbox, etc.
The data files are identical across platforms.
So far I've only tested the move map, ran it, and gone a few moves, picked up an object, that's about it, so far so good.
Excellent news. I was sure that a very good old school game lurked beneath the bugginess of the original. I hope to give the new version a good run through via DosBox-X in the near future and I will report back with my findings.
I hope someone can test it out and report any remaining bugs.
Would be nice to finally put this to bed so I can retire :)
I am currently testing Dan's new version(s) and he is sending me new zipped files as I find problems. So far we are on the fourth update from v 20.0.
