Blackscar Mountain - Titan Games RRP œ7.99  
Enhanced version for Double Disc Drive with 1 Meg Memory: œ8.99

                  Reviewed by Marion Taylor

The  prosperous   Kingdom   of  Zamara  suffers  from  one  major 
problem  - the Curse of Blackscar Mountain.  Legend has it  that, 
long  ages ago,  the insane Wizard Sarazar wished to spread  evil 
throughout  the  land. To this end,  he lured wicked  people  and 
creatures  to  the mountain and organised them  into  a  dreadful 
army.  Time  after  time Sarazar has sent out his army  and  time 
after  time the Royal forces have defeated them.  But only for  a 
while.  Until the Crystal Skull is found and destroyed  Sarazar's 
army will rise again.
                                                                  
The Skull is said to be in the Black Tower right at the very  top 
of Blackscar Mountain ... heavily guarded. It's your task to find 
a  way to it through mountain  tunnels and  caves, across  chasms 
and crevasses, hindered  by Orcs, Zombies, Harpies, Ogres, Trolls 
and a whole host of other dangerous creatures.
Well,  that's the story-line. Blackscar Mountain is a traditional 
text adventure with some graphics. Basically you have to hack and 
slay your way through the mountain with the main aim of relieving 
the various creatures of all the money they have and solve rather 
a lot of puzzles on the way.

You enter Blackscar standing beside a Stone Pillar on a road with 
a  Tavern  on one side of you and a General Store on  the  other. 
Resist  the  impulse to  dash into the Tavern and have  a  'quick 
one' before facing the trials and tribulations you know are ahead 
of you,  instead do what every sensible adventurer does - have  a 
look  at the  price list in the Store and see what you  can  buy. 
You're a bit short of money,  so for now,  buy a Mallet.  On your 
way  back out,  have a look at the Stone Pillar which has a  word 
written on it.

If  you now head North and West,  you'll come to a  Graveyard.  A 
good  look  round  gets you a Candle and a  Stake  and  by  going 
further West into the ruins of the Church gets you a Cross. Ahha! 
There must be a Vampire around somewhere. Well, there is and this 
is the first place where you can collect some extra money, but it 
isn't at this location so you'll have to do a bit of exploring to 
find it.  Once you've killed the Vampire,  head back to the Store 
and  with  the extra money,  buy the one thing that  makes  every 
adventurer uneasy unless he or she has it ...  a Lantern.  Buy an 
Axe and some Nails too, you might need them. Now's a good time to 
visit the Tavern and have a chat with the Barman and a Traveller. 
There's something else in the Tavern you need and it's  essential 
for dealing some Trolls later on,  so have a good Examine and try 
taking what you can see.

It's important to examine everything thoroughly,  there are  lots 
of  hidden objects and exits.  The puzzles are varied  and  range 
from  a fairly obvious Vampire one at the beginning (to  get  you 
going) to the very tricky.  Working out how to dispose of, or get 
round,  the masses of nasties can take a fair while and a lot  of 
head-scratching.  There  is  a HELP command in the game  and  the 
instructions  that come with it also give you some general  hints 
and 9 specific hints.  Even so, this is not an easy adventure and 
I wouldn't recommend it for a novice.

Blackscar has lots of useful  commands and abbreviations. L(ook), 
Ex(amine),  I(nventory),  RS(Ramsave),  RL(Ramload). Then there's 
Oops (back one move). You can Get All, Wear All, Drop All, Remove 
All.  Multiple sentences are allowed using It, And, All and Then. 
Toggling between Text and Pictures removes or adds Graphics.  The 
text  size  is  set  at 80 characters when  you  first  load  the 
adventure, but this can be changed to 40 by simply typing T. 

Did I like it?  Yes ...  and I would recommend it as an adventure 
which  will keep even the most experienced player  interested.  I 
found  only  one bug - there may be more,  I'm not  brilliant  at 
seeing  bugs - you seem to be able to use a plank  even  although 
you're  not  carrying it.  Whether the game knows  that  you  had 
earlier  picked this plank up,  but doesn't know that  you  later 
dropped it I'm not sure, but I bashed a certain something with it 
when I wasn't carrying it!