Wizard's Tower - author Chris Lloyd (PD)
             STAC adventure (text/graphics)

               Reviewed by Graham Wheeler

After many months of playing Adventures which for some unknown
reason were full of Arcade sequences and RPGs which were just
Hack 'n' Slay games with little or no real Role Playing elements
at all, I was ready to give up trying to find anything worth
playing on my ST. Luckily I decided to take a look at the PD
software advertised in SynTax and purchased Wizard's Tower.

In Wizard's Tower you play the part of a novice magic-user, keen
to expand your skills. You have arrived at the famous Wizard
Marek's Tower in the hope that he will teach you, but things have
gone very wrong here, the Tower has become over-run by evil
creatures and nobody has seen Marek for some time. The locals
tell you that many have entered the Tower to steal or explore but
few have ever been seen again. You stand outside the entrance,
determined to enter and retrieve the Great Wizard's Spell Books.

Now this may sound like the plot of many other adventures but
don't be put off, a lot of hard work and thought has been put
into the game and it certainly does not lack originality.

On loading the adventure I was immediately impressed by the clear
text and atmospheric room descriptions. I liked the black and
white graphics which, although fairly simple in nature, were
well-drawn and effective and could be easily turned off if not
required. The game features an Oops command and several useful
abbreviations like "Ex" for examine, which goes a long way to
making an adventure user-friendly. I also found the parser easy
to get to grips with, in fact in made a refreshing change to be
allowed to "type" instead of having to "click" - or, with my
mouse control, perhaps I should say fail to "click" - at various
points over the screen trying to find objects and input commands.

The adventure was enjoyable to play. The problems were well
thought out and the fact that many of them could be tackled in
more than one way added extra interest. It proved to be quite a
challenge trying to find the most economical solution in order to
preserve enough Hit Points and Spell Points to complete the game.

I can honestly say that Wizard's Tower is one of the best
adventures that I've played for a long time. I found no bugs or
annoying inconsistencies to mar my enjoyment and at the price of
a Public Domain disk, I can't recommend it highly enough.

@~Wizard's Tower is available on SynTax disk PD 6 for œ2.50
@~(or send in a contribution on disk and get it for nothing -
@~I never give up, do I?!)