AGT Adventures

@~This issue, Alex McEwan looks at Love's Fiery Rapture, Julian
@~Gregory and James Judge at Wraith Blaster, Linda Turnham at Zim
@~Greenleaf's Laboratory and Grimwold at Andkara.

         Love's Fiery Rapture - Natasha Mirage/AGT
(Multiple choice adventure for ST(50), PC(448) and Amiga(398))

         Played on PC & Reviewed by Alex McEwan

This game by Natasha Mirage (do YOU believe that name?) is not
really an adventure at all. It takes the form of a number of
multiple choice questions, the vast majority of which have only
two possible answers. It was originally created as a 'Choose Your
Own Adventure' using a system called PINNTALE by Pinnacle Software
and has now been converted to the AGT format which I played.

There was little or no documentation in the copy that I received,
and no real explanation of plot before you started, but the
sub-title of 'The Torrid Tale Of What Could Turn Out To Be THE
Perfect Date' gave some clue as to setting etc.  The first
question ascertains that you are looking for a straight boy meets
girl encounter, the second establishes your sex. Get either of
these 'wrong' and you will find yourself back at the DOS prompt,
albeit with what some people might consider a humorous message.
This largely sets the pattern for the rest of the game.  As you
progress the tendency to throw you out to DOS decreases, and if
you give a wrong answer you will generally be given a mild
reprimand and have a chance to recover the situation.

The object seems to be to enjoy a date with a dream partner, and
for this to lead to an almost inevitable conclusion.  When I got
thrown out of the game at one point for forgetting to dress before
I opened my front door, I noticed that I had scored 0 out of a
possible 1,000 points. On restarting and avoiding what appeared to
be obvious errors, I noticed that my score was still firmly rooted
to the nice round number. The point being of course that all the
points are awarded at once when you complete the task to your
mutual satisfaction.

From the information I received on completing the game it would
appear that I saw less than half of the available locations, 60
out of 149 to be precise, but I can't imagine that these numbers
relate to physical locations in the game. I think it is more
likely to be combinations of a location and the thread of actions
that will follow any particular response. As I indicated earlier
the humour in the game wasn't to my taste and I saw little point
in reloading to try and visit the 'locations' I had missed.  I
suspect that all I would get for the effort would be a few bad
jokes delivered in a room that I had already seen in different
circumstances.  I have to say that I found this 'game' to be
awful.  It took roughly ten minutes to complete and required
nothing more than typing a number from 1 to 4 in any given
situation.  In view of this I think the author was wise not to
even suggest a registration fee as I doubt if she would have
received much response.  She does give an address if you would
like to write to her, but I doubt if that will get much response
either, except maybe from people trying to find out if this Mirage
is for real.
                         * * * * *

             Wraith Blaster - Ken Dibble
        (Text-only Elite clone for PC on PD 531)

(1) Review by Julian Gregory

This is the most difficult adventure I have been asked to comment
on for reasons which will become clear as you read on.

I dutifully printed out the manual before starting and was glad I
had done so. At first glance it seems to be an attempt to create a
combination of a text version of Elite and the old Star Trek
combat game. But as it is an American game it is probably unlikely
they would have heard of Elite. The principle appears to be the
same in that you travel between various planets buying food,
cloth, electronics, drugs, arms, entertainment, gold, platinum and
rarities. As your funds grow you can purchase missiles, a phaser
and other more powerful weapons.  However, after playing for about
half an hour, I came to the conclusion that this is one of the
worst games I have been asked to review. Normally I would not
consider writing a review without completing a game. But in this
case I shall make an exception. The problems I found in Wraith
are:

1. I like games where you can load and start to play immediately.
In this case, reading the manual is essential to find out the
various commands.

2. The game begins by saying your ship is equipped with a phaser.
But I could not find any way to use it. I found I had to purchase
weapons as my credits increased. There is no excuse to get
something as fundamental as this wrong.

3. The fighting is limited. You have to locate and identify the
class of ship attacking you, then SHOOT ship WITH weapon. There is
no chasing after the enemy, you are told if the other craft has
been hit or destroyed or if you have missed. Much of the input is
very specific. As an example, you are not allowed to FIRE weapon
AT ship.

4. The game has been written using AGT and this means you cannot
score more than 32,767 credits. This is because of the way AGT
handles numbers. More than that and the computer will give you
about -32,000 credits. Admittedly this drawback is mentioned in
the manual, but I would have thought the profits from trading
could have been reduced by a factor of 10 to minimise this
disadvantage.

5. Too much reliance seems to be placed on the randomness of the
fighting.

6. It is too easy to build up credits by trading. I found very
easily two planets next to each other where I could make more than
6,000 credits on each trip.

7. There is no way of turning the sound effects off. There are
different sound effects for 16 different occurrences, such as
docking, firing a laser or a missile.

8. You start off with a cargo hold with a 20 ton capacity. Cargo
can only be bought in units of 1 ton which means that, to fill the
hold, you must type BUY cargo and then press G (for again) 20
times. After you have upgraded to a larger hold of 40 tons the
problem gets even worse. This just makes the whole GAME so BORING.

9. The scoring has not been implemented as far as I can see.

10. This type of game needs graphics to be successful, as Elite
was. It just does not work as text-only.

As a last word, it would seem that adventurers are not the only
people the game is aimed at. The manual begins by sounding off at
the trend towards graphic adventures at the expense of text-only
which can be used by blind or visually-impaired people using a
voice adapted computer. Perhaps that is the reason why I think it
is too easy, although there is nothing to say that the game is not
aimed at normal-sighted people.  I understand it received an
honourable mention in an AGT competition, but it certainly isn't
my cup of tea. I would be interested in seeing someone else's
views as this is the hardest review I have had to do. Most times
there is something good I can say about a game, but not in this
case. AVOID!!

                          * * * * *

               Wraith Blaster - Ken Dibble
          (Text-only Elite clone for PC on PD 531)

(2) Review by James Judge on an STe+PC emulator

I should imagine that all of us, at one time or another, have seen
the space trading game Elite, first brought out on the BBC and
then converted to most of the major 8 bits and was a hit on all of
them.  Then it was brought to the 16 bits with funky 3D vector
graphics that were actually filled!!  No longer was the planet a
green circle and you could distinguish enemy from ally by just
looking at the radar, instead of having to IDENTIFY each craft
when it appeared.  The stations were more clear and you could dock

properly. Well, now we're awaiting Elite 2 which should be a great
game...

Anyway, we've seen Elite clones everywhere, haven't we? From the
poor to the great, the ones that try and copy it right off to the
ones that use space trading, but minus the arcade bits.  Well, I
never thought I'd see it but now we are presented with another
clone, but it something completely different.  Gone are graphics
and sound effects and in are lengthy text descriptions, the key
click, and a few bleeps here and there for good measure.

Yes, you've guessed it:  Elite (the clone) as a text adventure.
Reading through the first batch of instructions I felt quite
excited as I contemplated dashes across the galaxy, solving
problems on certain worlds, trading as I went along and there
would be no high pitch peeping as I went through hyperspace.  How
deceiving first impressions can be.

The first lot of instructions go into great depth about the game
and how you should try and get to a specific rating and bank
account and if you went any higher the game would crash on you due
to the way AGT BIG works.

The second document went on about how 90% of the adventuring
population is blind, and so must use a special computer reader to
play games and that most of the adventurers who play text games
are so completely unco-ordinated that they can't approach a
joystick - thus the reason why we emigrated to the keyboard where
we can take our time, no doubt.  After being highly offended (no
offence to those of you who are either blind, unco-ordinated
(hello, J.Jillians) or blithering idiots (hello again, James) I
loaded up the game.

You start the game on a space port on a planet. You can either pop
up to your spaceship and fly off into the wild black yonder, nip
into the local traders and spend your 100 credits on some stock or
go into town and waste time.

Knowing this was a trading game I went to Fred the Trader (I gave
him a name so he wouldn't feel left out) and after many frustrated
moments I actually bought something, a few tons of food. The items
you can buy are very Elite-like (food, cloth and illegal items
(pirated copies of SynTax)).  The instructions are long but they
don't state how you are meant to buy items so it's just a matter
of trial and error getting the correct phraseology.

After buying the food I nipped up to the space station, orbiting
the planet (after wasting a few turns exploring the city) and
relocated myself in my ship. After following the correct procedure
(laid down in the instructions and all the commands were
abbreviated for those of us who find it hard to look a joystick in
the eye) I blasted off the station, heard a few bleeps, was
threatened by another ship and landed, all in one or two system
messages.

Oh well, another planet so I can sell my stock.  Funny thing
happened here - I sold my food and working it out on paper I
should have lost a couple of credits and my bank balance sad I had
lost a few but then a message told me I had gained about ten
credits, which didn't appear in either my calculations or my bank
balance. Hi dee ho dee hum.  And so the game went on, take off,
bleep, threaten, land, bleep again, nip to Fred's for a quick
trade and then back to the beginning of this sentence. As I said,
hi dee ho dee hum.

An utter waste of time and disk space if you ask me.  Apart from
being patronising the author made a complete bodge-up of trying to
emulate a brilliant trading game that runs by graphics on a poor,
at best, text system (even TADS would have made a few
improvements).  If it was written with problems on each planet
which you had to solve (ie: a member of the local council had been
killed and the murderer had gone off planet to the system Zygrad
and you would get paid if you brought him back.  After travelling
to the system Zygrad you locate the planet the murderer is on, but
he is hidden within a group of rather nasty people. You must solve
a mini-adventure to get the murderer and then find a way of
carting him back to the planet) the game would have been very good
with the trading bits essential to purchase pieces of kit to
complete the mini-adventures.

What surprises me most is that it got an honourable mention in the
latest Softworks competition.  Well, readers of SynTax will know
what I think of the HMs in THIS competition...

                         * * * * *

         Zim Greenleaf's Laboratory - Melody Grandy
    (AGT adventure for PC (563), ST (573) and Amiga (593))

                  Reviewed by Linda Turnham

After the title, an automatic sequence has you knocking on the
door of the slightly eccentric scientist Dr Veebris. He invites
you into his laboratory and proudly shows you his latest invention
- an Interdimensional Warp Transporter and, as it is a very cold
night, leaves the room to prepare a hot drink. Immediately you
push a button on the machine causing a glowing doorway to appear
in the previously solid north wall, you now get the option of
either reading the instructions or entering this door only to find

that it has now vanished leaving you stranded in a locked storage
closet.

Now it's over to you and by taking the the only action
available you find yourself shrinking until you are small enough
to fit into a waistcoat pocket and can crawl under a door to the
game playing area. This consists of eighty 36 (foot) tiles each of
which is inlaid with precious stones to depict a different herb
along with its Latin name. Fortunately for non-botanists the
common name appears along with your score and number of moves made
at the bottom of the screen. There is also a Persian carpet and,
standing on this floor, various huge pieces of ornate furniture.

Your main object is now to explore as much of the laboratory as
possible, dispatch anything which gets in your way and collect as
many valuables as you can. Then you must find a way to regain your
rightful size and get your booty back to your own dimension.

So it's onwards and upwards, mainly upwards in this game, you
certainly need a head for heights and hayfever sufferers could
also have a problem as there is a veritable jungle of plants here.
Someone has conveniently left a walking stick propped up against
the leg of the largest table but after that it's up to you to find
and use various objects to help you investigate further.

The nasties, one animal and one vegetable, are easily disposed of
if the correct object is to hand in each case but failure is not a
problem as you are allowed to be reincarnated to try again. It is
much more dangerous to lose your footing when up high as any fall
is certain to end your adventuring for good.  The NPC (non player
character), in this case Zim the owner of this laboratory, puts in
an appearance from time to time but don't be in too much of a
hurry to make his acquaintance, he's not dangerous but he will
certainly put an end to your treasure-gathering activities one way
or another.

Zim proves to be quite a complex character; at 8' 2" tall he
achieves by magic what Dr Veebris can only achieve by science. He
seems to like doing embroidery but is not too keen on domestic
chores if the dust to be found under some of his furniture is
anything to go by. He has an impressive collection of keys
scattered about, most of which don't seem to fit anything visible
(a problem I seem to share) and is most definitely a plantaholic
(another problem I share).  I'm afraid he also smokes a pipe, no
noxious or illegal substances here though, just a spearmint blend
but I suspect that even this may have the side effect of turning
hair green. One of his other addictions, if discovered, however,
may well work in your favour later on.

Complete the game successfully and both you and your treasure will
be restored to normal size and transported back to Veebris'
laboratory. He is delighted to have proof that his invention has
worked but when he tries the button again nothing happens. However
he is confident of fixing it before too long. You are left
wondering what to do with your fortune, although you must admit
you would like to meet Zim again.

I found this game a little slow to start with as it proved
necessary to search the floor to find some of the items needed,
one of which in particular was required very early on and there is
an awful lot of floor to cover. Once I had done this though and
actually started playing I enjoyed it a great deal. Melody has
used her knowledge of both plants and laboratory equipment to
create real atmosphere here. She also has an eye for detail which,
coupled with a vivid imagination, results in some really beautiful
descriptions.

Although this is an AGT written adventure any relevant information
always appears at the bottom of the text so it is possible to
enjoy the scene without getting frustrated about what you can
interact with and what is only window dressing.  The only problems
I encountered in this game involved American use of English, two
verbs were used in what seemed to me to be a rather strange way.
One was available under the help option but I had to work the
other one out by a combination of program peeping and trial and
error.

This is a nicely thought out, imaginative adventure and in my
opinion, although not hard, well worth playing.

                         * * * * *

      Andkara (Baby, the rain must fall) - Randy H. Smith
     (AGT adventure for PC (195), ST (213) and Amiga (366))

                  Dwarfed on a PC by Grimwold

"You awaken from a refreshing sleep, lying on your stomach and
noting that it seems unusually bright in your bedroom this morning
and that the birds which normally sing outside your window sound
much louder than usual. Then you feel a cool breeze on your skin
as you snuggle a little farther under the covers. And it hits you.
Instead of smelling morning aromas like bacon, coffee and such,
your nose is telling you tales of grass, trees and wild flowers.
You ease your eyes open, roll over and there you are, lying in
your bed ... in the middle of a forest clearing, underneath a
sky bluer than any you've ever seen before!"

That's the title screen and general scenario-setting out of the
way of this AGT'd (yup, another one!) text adventure by an
American author (yup, another one!). It has all the usual AGT
drawbacks, with which most of you will be familiar so I'll not
linger too long on those.

As the introduction suggests, I started off in my bed. Not being
able to "GET OUT", I went "UP" into a clearing. Exits abound, so I
chose a likely looking path to the north.  Aha!  Couldn't go
wandering wearing just my pyjamas! So a quick search around and
under things produced some clothing and boots which I duly wore.
Tried going north again. Still not allowed. Had to remove the
pyjamas (wearing clothing over the top of them obviously not
allowed). Tried again.  Still not allowed, this time a dark and
ominous cloud distracted me. Tried going north a few more times
with no success until it started to rain. I melted. End of game.
Strange land this, acid rain obviously has a new meaning around
here. Ok, I'll try again from the top (since I'm not given a
chance to restart, and not having saved a position so early in my
short game, I had to exit to DOS and start all over again). Not to
worry. This time I managed to get under cover. This was eventually
achieved by "CRAWL UNDER BED".  "GET UNDER", "CLIMB UNDER" or
simply "HIDE UNDER BED" weren't accommodated for. Again, this
strange land doesn't understand such verbose and unusual
vocabulary.

Fair enough, I managed to avoid the nasty wet stuff and got around
to exploring for a while. Found myself on a high cliff path with
exits all around. All but two exits produced a rapidly
accelerating adventurer as he fell from the path. Normally I am
quite sure footed, never more so than on a high cliff path, but in
this land, I am assumed to be as club footed as Dr Frankenstein's
pride and joy.

Played on for a little while longer but got fed up with constantly
reloading saved positions following such seemingly innocent
actions and "East", "Enter" (a stone temple), "Knock on the gate"
(I couldn't answer the password so I automatically sat down, was
pickpocketed and immediately hit the offender who died, getting me
thrown into prison) and trying to cross a chasm on a convenient
log (Ok, so that was a bit dodgy, but why place it there if the
only object is to kill the player?)

Does Grimwold like this game? Nope. Not a lot. It's a shame as
what is basically a nice, atmospheric game, with some nice text
(though spoiled by occasional typographical and spelling errors),
is totally wrecked and destroyed by the hostility of the gameplay.
Being chastised simply by choosing the wrong route, or by entering
a temple (surely, that would be safe?) by ending the game just
doesn't do it for me. All of my favourite games, on many
computers, have been those that have encouraged the player to
continue playing, rather than plonk him or her back to the start.
There are better games around to choose from, those that will give
you a feeling of satisfaction and intrigue you enough to continue.
Get those. Don't get this unless you like reading the AGT
copyright message over and over again.

                 Grimwold's score: 2/10