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Old-school charm
, June 7, 2010by Bernie (Fredericksburg, VA) It's been a very long time since I've played any of these old dungeon-crawl games. I was tickled to discover that they still held quite a bit of entertainment value. You play the part of an adventurer who must gather treasure while exploring a rather vast cave.
Like any older game, this one held numerous parser frustrations. The game recognizes few verbs, and "examine" "search" and "i" are notably missing (you must type 'inventory' instead). To further complicate things, there are no room names, there is no 'undo' command, and there is at least one object that is easy to lose irretrievably if it is used at the wrong time. There is also no 'save' or 'restore'. The game instead uses 'suspend' and 'resume', but this seems to allow only one saved game at a time. Further saves overwrite the previous save. (Spoiler - click to show)It took me several deaths before I discovered that "swing knife" would allow me to attack the monsters, since the game doesn't seem to recognize them as nouns. Also, at some point I got very frustrated over a puzzle until I realized that by dropping the rope then typing "climb down" allowed me to use the rope even though "use rope" didn't work.
Nevertheless, as I worked my way through the caverns and discovered a series of twisty little passages, all alike, and worked to free myself before my brass lantern ran out of batteries, I found myself grinning. I still haven't succeeded in solving all the puzzles, and I suspect that this game will replace solitaire for a few weeks as my favorite 'bored at work' diversion.