The Island

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.