Larn and Antep
               (RPGS for Amiga on PD 567)
         (ST Larn is on PD 25 and PC Larn on PD 627)

               Reviewed by Bill Commons

1. Larn

When I loaded this adventure I was informed that this version was
written in 1987. This was about the time I had bought my first ST
and was being astounded by Dungeon Master, and found myself hooked
on role playing games. Well, this one is nothing like that.

After loading the game you are presented with the plot, which is
to explore the caverns of Larn to find a magic cure for your
dying daughter. It's funny, but if you list your inventory you
already have it but can't use it in your home.

The game is played on a blank, black screen with very basic
graphics, for instance you are represented by a green rectangle
about the size of a capital letter in a text adventure and the
bank is shown by a yellow dollar sign. One of the monsters, a bat,
is a minus sign and, when fighting it, you get lines of text
saying 'the bat missed, you missed the bat, you hit the bat, the
bat died.' The larger monsters caused the screen to flash white.
Exciting, isn't it?

I could only get down to level five before getting killed and
although there is a save feature I could not find a restore
method, so each time I had to restart from the beginning.

In the text READ.ME files there is a cheat mode which makes you
invincible but it also prints out all the mazes before you move,
showing where everything is, and is a bit boring to play.

When you enter the caverns you are again presented with a black
screen but as you move it draws a red line above and below you to
map the maze of that floor. At some point you will find a set of
stairs going down to the next level.

I was not impressed with this game but it was interesting to see
how the original text Dungeons and Dragons game had been adapted
to include very basic graphics.

2. Antep

This game is on the same disk [on the Amiga only ... Sue] and you
cannot use the save/restore facility on either game as it says the
disk is full so I deleted the complete game from my copy, but I
should imagine that just a few READ.ME files would do as well.

This adventure is almost identical to Legends of Lothian which I
reviewed in an earlier issue. The graphics are almost the same but
I could not get a clue as to what I should be doing. I asked the
inhabitants of the first town and castle that I visited but after
wandering along several paths outside and fighting loads of
attacking insects and getting killed time after time I gave up. I
imagine that this is also similar to Ultima as there is a
reference to it being a clone of it in the introduction.