Starwrek - HAT Software/Castlesoft - RRP œ5.00
           (STAC text/graphic adventure for ST)

It must be a couple of years now since I saw an advert for
Starwrek in one of the glossy ST mags. They were asking near
enough œ20 for it, and I can remember thinking at the time ...
you'll be lucky!.  Now the game has been re-released by Castlesoft
at a far more sensible price of a fiver. That sounds a more
realistic price for a STAC game so it was time to take a look.

You can probably guess from the title that this is a Star Trek
spoof. The authors presumably aren't concerned about Paramount's
recent legal onslaught on any program which remotely contains
anything to do with Star Trek. Taking place on the U.S.S.Less, it
has the full complement of characters you'd expect - Captain James
Birk, medico Dr Moans, engineer Snotty, the alien Spook plus
Ahora, Zulu and Jerkov. The characters are introduced, if they
need it, in the short story in the manual packed with the disk.
The manual also serves as copy protection ('type in word x from
paragraph y on page z' sort of thing) but this protection must,
annoyingly, be carried out every time you restart the game. Since
one early section has a lot of opportunity for death due to
asphyxiation, this can cause a lot of frustration as you seem to
be constantly digging out the booklet.

The story is fairly straightforward. The U.S.S.Less is in dire
need of some essential delerium crystals but, due to cash flow
problems, Birk wants to borrow them. The ship has just landed on
the Clinker planet where they can be obtained. But the Clinkers
are not the most generous of folk and the chances of them just
handing over some crystals are very slim. You are the unlucky soul
chosen to negotiate with the Clinkers.

After typing in your name and going through the copy protection,
the data is loaded and the game starts on the ship's bridge. There
are few locations to explore here but all have graphics and
several are animated - a nice touch ... talk to Birk and see his
lips move. There are a few puzzles to solve, but some of the
objects you'll gain won't be needed until later in the game. What
you DO need is the equipment to go onto the planet's surface. This
isn't too hard to do (so long as you watch out for the Venuvian
Slime Bogey, a cute looking fish with rather unpleasant habits)
and, going through the airlock, you'll emerge in the vehicle park
belonging to the Spaceport.

Your air supply won't last long so you'll have to move quickly to
gain entry to the Spaceport's dome. This involves getting one
necessary object, guarded by a frog. And this was where I hit
problems. I examined and manipulated everything both inside and
outside the ship, dying time and time again, cursing that dratted
copy protection each time I needed to restart.  Time to look at
the official solution ...  Argh!!  It didn't work! Not only that
but it was wrong in several respects up to the point I'd got to
(which wasn't very far). A phone call later Jim Johnston galloped
to the rescue, having contacted Castlesoft who aren't far from
him. They told me what to do ...  the program didn't even
recognise the words they told me to use! Not impressed and very
fed up, I spent a further 45 minutes re-trying every command I
could think of in all possible locations. When no progress was
made by the end of that time I decided to call it quits.

So, what are my conclusions? Firstly I'm surprised the game took
two years to write, unless a lot of that time was spent on the
graphics. These are generally very good, especially the animated
ones.

One other good point, there is often a prompt for the second word
of your input if the program doesn't recognise it which can be a
help e.g. >get hat, if 'hat' isn't known, gives the response 'get
what?' thus giving you a second chance, handy when your oxygen
level is getting dangerously low.

Since this is a spoof, you'd expect it to be humorous. Well, there
are a lot of jokes of sorts through the text and booklet and
they'll appeal if your sense of humour fits in with things like
Birk's bed being unmade because the cleaning lady did a bunk ...

The game itself isn't that well programmed and the spelling is
decidedly dodgy. 'Opperated' and 'dilligent' were just two early
howlers. There's at least one in the booklet ('begane') which
isn't too bright when it's being used for copy protection.  There
are some capital letters missing from the text. Surprisingly there
is no Ramsave which is easy to program into STAC. Objects dropped
in a location don't appear in the location description on later
visits or when doing a LOOK so make a note of where you drop them.
Similarly items of clothing don't appear in your inventory once
worn. There are further oddities such as being able to 'get
bottle' but needing to 'drop whiskey', having to push a bench to a
locker to be able to reach something on top of the locker but not
having to stand on the bench and a displayed score but no actual
'score' command.

I've played better and more enjoyable games through the public
domain or shareware at a much cheaper price.  I wonder how many
they sold at œ20?
                                                Sue

Castlesoft are at Levenmouth Business Centre, Riverside Road,
Leven, Fife, KY8 4LT.