Enchanted Cave

This is a classically old dungeon crawl game, and from the beginning you do feel transported back into the bulletin board era. This was felt the more so for playing it on my Android mobile on the app Explore, which is available officially in the Android marketplace (the app plays a couple more of the authors' games). Originally it was written for the TRS-80. Game limitations were immediately evident: EXAMINE doesn't exist at all, L does not work as an abbreviation for LOOK, and INVENT is the only abbreviation for INVENTORY. These don't interrupt the game experience too much, however. Other commands you would expect to be implemented aren't, such as play drum or get taco, and push/pull/move etc (although one of those is necessary on one particular object). Despite this I did find it immediately playable, and one of the early commands needed to enter the cave proper was surprising and added to the sense of game intelligence. It was evident that this game was an old one with a limited parser, so this was always going to be taken into account. Curiously, HELP gave Save + Load commands as SUSPEND + RESUME, which was unusual, but save and restore also worked anyway. Gameplay was in a traditional Colossal Cave-like environment. A little while into the game it appeared at first that I was trapped, but a specific command was required for a return journey (Spoiler - click to show) SWIM rather than GO PIPE, ENTER PIPE, etc . And since the way in was not via the pipe anyway but by a more obtuse means, this was more than a little harsh. The necessary command was a standard entry likely to be tried, but not necessarily a reasonable one (Spoiler - click to show) DRINK WATER (from stream) . Little touches like this made it seem more difficult a game than it actually is. Overall though there was the sense that this is a magical world with not necessarily conventional rules. It is also possible to die, but you have to do something foolish or disobey clues. One bugbear not explained away by the cryptic magical environment is a key item which only appears in a forest location after visiting another location - one of those event-tied puzzles which was totally unnecessary, and even though I personally explored the forest second anyway, another player might not have done and could be put off the game immediately. Overcome these type of limitations, due primarily to the age of the game, and it's actually quite enjoyable, though pretty short.