Darkness is Forever - Simon Brown (PD)

                  Reviewed by Neil Shipman

It must have been a pretty good time you had last night because 
you wake up in a bedroom not knowing who, or even where, you are. 
Fortunately, it doesn't take much searching around to reveal your 
identity as Arnold Forthwright P.I. with your home and office 
addresses in Paris.

From the look of the place the old investigating business has been 
going downhill recently as there's white mould growing on your 
bed, grime and grease on every surface in the kitchen and 
condensation pouring down the walls. More disturbing though are 
the bloodstains in the hall and the sight of what's beneath the 
coat in the corridor.

One step further into the bathroom and you're greeted with the 
horrific spectacle of a headless corpse floating in a bath of 
blood! It doesn't look as if your memory loss was the result of a 
night on the town but rather that you were scared out of your mind 
by someone or something.

Taking a hold on your sanity you resolve to find out what's going 
on. When you manage to get out onto the street - a bit difficult 
this because there aren't any doors or windows - as luck would 
have it there's a taxi waiting to take you to your office. This is 
situated in a better part of the city but seems to have been 
subjected to an arson attack. Reporters are milling about looking 
for a good story and the police are reluctant to let you into the 
building.

Solving the problem of entry will enable you to get to your 
private office where, after opening a booby-trapped cabinet 
undamaged by the fire, you'll be rewarded with a file giving 
details of the Dupont Murder case.

From your investigations so far it appears that there might be a 
connection between Angelique Dupont's son's murder and the site of 
an old, demolished church near where she lives. The crypt was 
sealed long ago but there have been strange rumours of mysterious 
creatures living deep within it. The file ends with a note of how 
you propose to investigate the site that night and write a report 
the next day.

So, from your condition this morning it looks as if the previous 
night's excursions turned up something. Was it these creatures 
that frightened you out of your wits and left the body in the bath 
as a warning? In the cold light of day your courage returns and 
you set off to try and bring the case to a successful conclusion.

Darkness Is Forever is primarily a text adventure but, if you've 
got a high resolution monitor, you'll be treated to a few pictures 
too. In medium resolution the split graphic of the loading screen 
is the only one you get. Presentation is standard black text on a 
white background.

The 60+ location descriptions are usually four or five lines long 
and so are the messages you get when you meet your death - which 
you undoubtedly will more than once! Unfortunately they exhibit 
the usual poor spelling which seems to be all too prevalent in 
many home-produced adventures (although it's not the worst I've 
seen).

Portable objects are defined in capital letters so you don't have 
to do a lot of searching around for the right noun. Typing 
COMMANDS will display a list of the recognised verbs. When you get 
stuck, HELP will bring forth a 5 character code (which is 
different in each location) and XLOAD will run a separate program 
into which this can be entered for a (sometimes) useful clue.

Even with such help you will more than likely come to a full stop 
before too long because the parser is extremely unforgiving, only 
accepting very specific inputs. I only managed to complete the 
adventure after contacting the author on a number of occasions. 
The first time I spoke to him he knew where I was stuck even 
before I explained what I'd done and where I'd been - so this 
particular point appears to have been a stumbling block for quite 
a few adventurers!

If it wasn't for the inadequacy of the parser the puzzles would 
not be very difficult and, if you persevere, you will finally 
reach the crypt where a huge, decaying creature of darkness lies 
asleep on a tomb. Destroy it and success is yours.

There are better PD adventures available but, if you've played 
everything else that's going and want something to make you tear 
your hair out in frustration, then Darkness Is Forever is probably 
worth taking a look at. But, rather than spend œ2.50 on it, why 
not send in a contribution to SynTax on disk and get this in 
return? There'll be a full solution in the next issue.

@~Darkness is Forever is available on SynTax PD disk 40 (but I'd
@~rather have a contribution!)