Moraff's Revenge - on PD 171
                   (Shareware RPG for PC)

                    Reviewed by Stalker

With a lazy flick, the cigar butt arched its way through the air
and landed in the grey coals of the dying fire, sending up a
shower of crimson sparks into the dawn sky. Claymore exhaled the
last lung full of smoke, rolled the whetstone neatly in its cloth
and stowed it in his pack. Taking an oily rag he polished the
blade of his newly sharpened LOCHABER axe. With an air of
expectation he stood up, shouldered his pack, put on the harness
for the axe, which he then slid in so that it hung comfortably
down his back. "WILL THIS BE A HARD ADVENTURE?" he wondered, as I
slowly typed in the word BEGIN!

The adventure came on a 3 1/2 inch disk. Once loaded, the
on-screen prompt was "colour ? yes or no". Hitting "Y" brought up

the title screen:
          'MORAFF'S REVENGE BEGINNER'S VERSION.32'
"Beginner's!" sulked Claymore. I ignored him and hit the next key.

Up came the next page explaining that this was an RPG where you
could either be a Fighter or a Wizard; that you will venture into
dungeons in search of treasure, kill monsters and for each monster
killed you would be given experience points. The more monsters
killed the more experience points you would obtain, the more
points the more powerful you became. "This really is for
beginners," sighed Claymore. I still ignored him and hit another
key. This brought up the menu page, where you could
1} CREATE A NEW CHARACTER.
2} PLAY THE GAME.
3} VISIT A HALL OF FAME.
4} SAVE ROUTINE.
5} ORDER MORAFF'S REVENGE IN A ADVANCE VERSION.
"Now that's more like the thing," chirped Claymore. As usual I
ignored him [he always tries to run before he can walk] and hit
the CREATE A NEW CHARACTER key.  The next page explained about
characteristics, was well laid out, easy to read and automatically
adjusted itself to a higher resolution so that you could get the
whole page onto the screen.  NICE TOUCH!

The usual characteristics were there, plus one that I had not seen
before, called LAZINESS, which seemed to serve no purpose other
than to deduct points from the more important characteristics. "A
touch of humour," I wondered. " A waste of time," whispered
Claymore.  "We will see," I said, and hit yet another key.
Selection time! = HUMAN-DWARF-ELF-HOBBIT, "Strange," I thought,"
how do I know what I want to be if I don't know what the abilities
of the races are?"  "Better stick to human," advised Claymore.
"Right," I said and hit the return key.

Dice rolling screen. Go for a strength of at least 22 was the
advice given by the instruction page. It took me about 10 minutes
of continual rerolling to get it, but there were plenty of times
when I could have had a LAZINESS of 23 points, perhaps Claymore
was right?. The next screen gives the option, FIGHTER or WIZARD. I
looked at Claymore who was swinging his axe."No point me
sharpening this thing if I am going to be a WIZARD," he retorted.
"Right," I said, "Fighter it is then".  "Thanks," he beamed."Type
in my name then off we go."

The next screen prompt asked the question "Sound, yes or no?". But
the sound came from the computer's speaker and not through the
sound card.  Hitting the 'Y' key brought up more adverts, instead
of thrusting Claymore into the game. "Full of adverts," he moaned.
"Try hitting another key". Now we are into it, an on-screen map of
a town on one half of the screen and a third-person 3D view on the
other. "What is this? A HELP button?" "Hit it quick," shouted
Claymore. Now, that is what I have been looking for, a screen full
of instructions, plenty of useful ones here, but how do I get to
print them out? Never mind, let's look through a few.  They're
well written, easy read and will laid out.

Oh! What's this? 'SEEK YE THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH OF THE 70th
LEVEL!!' "Hell's teeth!" groaned Claymore, "This will keep me
going for months!" Great instructions, very clear, but somehow I
wished that I could have been able to print them out, maybe I

missed something. OK!  Let's get going. Movement is done by the
arrow keys and the screen responds pretty well, the help key seems
to be permanent, perhaps it is better than a printout after all...

First thing we did was to explore the town. A name for the town
may have given a little more realism. (Perhaps that is just me?).
We found ropes and ladders at different parts of the town - with
no name - ladders going down and ropes going up "Ropes going up in
a town", mused Claymore "Well, each to his own". We tried a rope,
"Great, sussed it." The T ropes are Temples, S ropes are Stores, W
ropes are Wizard Guilds, I ropes Inns and B ropes are Banks.

Well, enough of rope climbing, let's try downstairs...SMACK! Right
into a monster, but with a few good swipes with his knife,
Claymore had him down. "No gold though"..... Round the corner,
SMACK! Face to face with a level 3 troll, this time no luck.
Claymore was killed with the first blow. HA. HA. HA. YOU'RE DEAD!
scoffed the screen.  Poor Claymore. Trouble was, I did not save
his character. There was no option for restarting the game, which
was a shame, as I soon got fed up with rolling the dice. I think I
will try being an Elf!....

CONCLUSION

The game is similar to "HACK" with graphics.  I played the game
through until Claymore reached 6th level Fighter, then, for no
apparent reason, he was killed. There is no way of being
reinstated.  DEAD is DEAD in this game. Which I find a bit of a
pain, as it means that you must start from the beginning again.
(unless of course I missed something). Restarting a game too often
is not my idea of fun.  Imagine this, you get to the 69th level,
you have a super duper fighter, then, BANG! YOU'RE DEAD. HA. HA.
HA. Start again!.. From the Beginning!.... NO WAY!