Unnkulia One-Half: The Salesman Triumphant
            by D A Leary / Adventions - SynTax PD 541
                   (TADS Text adventure on PC)

                     Review by Neil Shipman

With his first "Unventure", Unnkulian Underworld, Dave Leary
succeeded in creating an original and very funny whole new
gameworld. Fellow author Dave Baggett followed this with the
second one, The Secret of Acme, and I felt sure that Unnkulian
Unventures were set to become a series which every discerning
text adventurer would delight in.

Since then the two Daves have teamed up to form Adventions and
have been bringing more of their ideas to life using the latest
version of TADS. Having demonstrated his writing ability and
sense of humour, not to mention his programming expertise, Leary
now works back from the first two titles to Unnkulia Zero, a
large, complex and difficult game, via Unnkulia One-Half: The
Salesman Triumphant.

In this adventure you do not, for once, play the part of the
valley warrior fighting against the dread demons of Unnkulia; you
actually get to experience things from the point of view of an
Acme salesman, one Jay-Bob Tuckbucker.

Since your childhood you had admired the spiffy mauve suits and
orange ties worn by Acme reps and you'd always wanted to be a
salesman. But you hadn't expected to be sent to ply your trade in
such a backwater as the Forest of Radeekal, near the border with
the Valley King's Underworld.

When the game begins you are sitting in the Golden Dragon Inn
bemoaning the fact that you have just had to give a warrior his
money back because his can of Acme Snayk Rhepellant didn't work;
indeed, you are becoming more and more disillusioned with your
job as you realise that none of Acme's products seems to work;
and to cap it all the bartender has disappeared so you can't even
get a drink.

Off you set to look for him and, would you believe it, when you
find the drunken old sot he says he will sell you the Inn for the
princely sum of 18 valmids! Now that's too good an offer to
refuse and the ensuing quest for a number of valuable items worth
this amount will take you on an exploration of the caverns and
passages below the Inn as well as a few locations above ground.

You will be faced with puzzles like how can you safely get a
crown and a key which are sitting on a ledge in a chimney? Can
you beat gambler Les Vayghas on the flip of a coin? What do the
Valley Patrol want and what on earth are you supposed to do with
a cheezdom? (No, you can't wear it!)

Location descriptions are a good length as are responses to your
actions - and many of these will have you laughing. Numerous
footnotes (which aren't necessary to the plot) raise the chuckle
factor still further. Though restricted by both number and weight
of items, your inventory is large and you have little difficulty
carrying nearly everything you need - and that's just about every

object you come across as there is only one which serves little
purpose.

The various characters are brought to life by their humorous
comments and reactions towards you. These differ according to
what you are wearing as well as to what you say to them. Do try
interacting with them in different ways because the author has
provided many witty responses.

As players of the previous Unnkulian Unventures will know, many
Acme products are described with phonetic spelling. Items in The
Salesman Triumphant are no exception and you will come across
things like a Soopur-Sopht Downee Pillough, a Slysor-Dysor Kookee
Khutoor, and the skeleton of someone who, fortunately for you,
didn't have Acme Dam Eckspensif Lyfe Ihnshoorants - otherwise you
might have had to pay out!

TADS has been almost completely re-written and, in its latest
incarnation (version 2), it is a much more powerful adventure-
programming tool. Players, however, will probably only notice
features like highlighted text and the multiple UNDO feature
present in this game.

Adventions have used The Salesman Triumphant as a proving ground
and a way of becoming familiar with the new version. Although not
a very big adventure it fits in well with the gameworld which
ardent Unnkulia fans are already familiar with and whets one's
appetite for Unnkulia Zero. It achieves all these objectives as
well as demonstrating Leary's off-the-wall sense of humour to
players coming new to this great series.

So confident are they that it will meet with approval that they
don't want paying for it and it's not even shareware. In fact
it's totally FREE. And, on the same disk, you get a playable demo
of Unnkulia Zero. What more could you ask for?

If you've got any time at all for text adventuring then you can't
possibly resist taking a look at Unnkulia One-Half: The Salesman
Triumphant. With a difficulty rating of "Trivial (2/10)" it
shouldn't take you long to complete, I guarantee you won't be
disappointed and I would honestly be surprised if you are not
tempted to play the other Unventures.