@~Two reviews again, this time from Grimwold and Janice Charnley,
@~which go to show how two people can have very different views of
@~the same game - which is what makes these 'double reviews' so
@~useful.

     MYTHMASTER 1:A VAGABOND'S ADVENTURE by Carol L. Standley
          (PC Shareware graphic adventure on PD 628)

(1)                  Dwarfed by Grimwold

"This is the first great tale of the MythMaster, a nickname given
to an adventuresome young man seeking fame and fortune as a
troubleshooting vagabond from the kingdom of Ethra.  Anton Schlepp
came from humble beginnings. His parents were farmers who worked
hard their whole lives to have a comfortable home and enough to
eat.

"When growing up, Anton had heard amazing tales of power and magic
that could reach beyond his own world into the cosmos. But, from
an early age, Anton showed a strong inclination for being a world
class klutz. At the age of eighteen, his parents finally had to
turn him out of the house when he accidentally burned down the
barn.

"Anton was thunderstruck. He set out with only a knapsack and as
many provisions as he could carry, but he was determined to
change his luck. He was a hopeful dreamer, bumbling through life
as he always had until upon entering his kingdom of Cafray, he
happened upon a man in a very great hurry with a remarkable
story..."

MythMaster comes supplied in compressed form, needing to be
decompressed onto a hard drive, where it takes up a greedy 2.5M.
The quoted requirements needed are: 384K of RAM/2.5M Hard drive
space/EGA or VGA, which will suit most systems.  The blurb in the
enclosed "readme" files claims that MythMaster is a: "3-D, EGA,
interactive adventure game you'll enjoy playing for many hours".
But then, we all know how much blurb lies, even in the shareware
domain. If I was writing the intro, as an independent, I would
rephrase the above to a more truthful:

"Slow, annoyingly fiddly control method, guiding a roughly
boy-shaped blob around a scenery of average quality, picking up
objects and dying when you do something wrong."

Anyone who's played "Hugo's House of Horrors" will recognise the
similarities immediately, it's the same "use the cursor keys to
guide your blob around the screen, and type in the commands when
appropriate", only in this case, it's worse. Even with the speed
set to "FAST", my 386 propelled the Anton blob along at
continental-drift speed, making back-tracking a thing to be
avoided if possible.  This led to plenty of time for such thoughts
as "why did I load this game?"  and "why don't I just switch off
and do something more interesting, like watching paint dry?" as
Anton-blob crosses the screen. It's not even 3-D, when Anton-blob
walks away from you, he remains the same size, not getting smaller
according to the laws of perspective.

The biggest problem of all is trying to determine what the various
blobs actually are. In one location, there's a pixel that bounces
around.  This apparently, is a cricket. In another, there's
something that resembles a drowned rat which is, according to the
program, a pixie. Another major pain is trying to position the
Anton-blob to, say, open a door. Time and time again you're told
"You're not close enough."  when your nose is squashed flat
against the wood of said door. "Hunt-the-pixel" has never been my
idea of a good time.

The style of the EGA graphics and the general cartoon layout
suggest that this game is aimed at children, and if so, then it
would probably be enjoyable to them but for several points:

A. Too slow, Anton-blob takes forever to cross the screen.
(However, when he climbs a tree, he goes into fast-forward, making
it very easy to fall off and die!)

B. Objects not clearly defined, it takes a great deal of squinting
and imagination to guess at what they actually are.

C. Several instant deaths, which even the grown-ups dislike.

In fact, the only thing I can find in this game that is lacking in
others of this genre, is that the parser is actually quite good.

The author asks for a registration of $28.  It's a lot, and in my
opinion, it ain't worth half that!

   Grimwold's ratings:
                           Graphics        - 2/10
                           Sound           - N/A (Bleep!)
                           Puzzles         - 2/10
                           Atmosphere      - 0/10
                           'Grabability'   - 0/10
                           VFM             - 2/10
                           Overall         - 1/10

                         * * * * *



(2) Played by Janice Charnley

Mythmaster is an attractive, shareware, 3-D interactive adventure,
written by Carol L. Standley. the game can be played using
joystick and keyboard or just the keyboard and looks very much
like the early King's Quest games.

You take the part of Anton Schlepp, a world class klutz, turned
out of his parent's house for accidentally burning down the barn. As
Anton, you'll explore a kingdom of 70 locations on your quest to
become a hero and magician.  The scene is set when Anton sets out
with his knapsack, determined to change his luck, and meets a
woodcutter who is in a hurry to leave the country as his wife has
disappeared and he is afraid to stay. Unfortunately, I didn't
discover what happened to the woodcutter's wife as I'm completely
stuck with only 44 points out of 206.

I haven't yet found any real puzzles - more a case of exploring
and collecting items but, of course, there is a long way to go
until the end of the game. MythMaster has that 'certain something'
for me and I've kept going back to it, increasing my score slowly,
but I can't think of anything new to try now. If anyone can help
me out, I'd be very pleased to hear from them.

@~I've played MythMaster too and not got any further than Janice
@~but on the whole I agree with her rather than Grimwold. Then
@~again, I liked the early KQ games and MM reminded me of them
@~very much.