@~Two AGT reviews this issue - New England Gothic is reviewed by @~Linda Turnham and Oceana by Grimwold. New England Gothic - author Simba (On PD 445 (Amiga), 363 (PC) and 364 (ST)) Reviewed by Linda Turnham You are a young woman in the year 1899, all alone in the world since your Mother passed on, living and working in New York supporting yourself as a secretary although I thought they were called stenographers at that time. You haven't been given a name but in the context of this adventure, it wouldn't be anything too fancy probably something biblical like Ruth or floral like Rose I would think. Anyway you have just been informed of the demise of your Great Aunt who has left you her old colonial house in New England complete with the usual mountain of debts. Your task here is to "solve the mystery of your Great Aunt's reclusive life, realise the potential of your inheritance and (of course) find true love". All in the best Gothic tradition but without the vampires. After the instructions you find yourself on a train heading towards the sea your only luggage, your trusty satchel on the seat beside you. Judging by the contents of this satchel you are not planning a lengthy stay but you do seem to have enough matches to satisfy even the most ardent pyromaniac. You don't seem to have your Great Aunt's address either so it's a bit of a gamble as to whether you leave the train at Sea Town or carry on to the end of the line. Having made this decision you are ready to play the adventure which mainly consists of finding and reading various written items which taken together allow you to piece together the truth. On the face of it your Great Aunt's fiance disappeared on a treasure seeking expedition to the South Seas leaving her to bear an illegitimate child which subsequently died but you don't need your Great Aunt's ghost to tell you that things are not what they seem. There are not many puzzles to solve here and all are fairly easy with one exception, which is either very clever or downright stupid according to your point of view. The first half of the problem is logical enough but then you must perform an action which is totally unrelated to complete it. I only found this out by chance when on the point of giving up in disgust I was doing totally silly things but it was sheer good luck. The only redeeming features of this game, to my mind, are the descriptions of the locations that can be visited . Those inside the house in particular are extremely detailed and you can get a very good idea of what a colonial home of the period looked like as well as the way it would have been furnished and the kinds of historical objects it would have contained. As these are based on the village where Simba grew up and on an existing house and its surroundings, I think this must be one of her trips down Memory Lane. There were too many irrelevant objects that could be picked up but not used for my taste and the vocabulary is very limited. I also found the programming rather strange, where else could you become the world's strongest woman and pick up and lug round a carriage but not be able to enter it? And if after collecting the spyglass you put it down on, say, a worktop you are told there is a spyglass here (on the floor) on the worktop. This can work to your advantage though if you want a huge score because when you find the pirate chest you can keep opening it and gain more points each time. I felt that as with Fleece Quest, another of Simba's games, too much emphasis is placed on simply reading things, there are not enough puzzles and too many wasted opportunities for this to be a good adventure. If I want to read I prefer to pick up a book. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Oceana - author Philip Boswell (Master's AGT game for PC on PD 685) Reviewed by Grimwold "In the year 2089 Earth began its period of colonial expansion. First colonized were the other planets in its own solar system. There were the first permanent cities on other planets in which civilian personnel lived. Before then, the only off world civilian colony was on the moon. As these colonies grew and prospered, mankind turned its efforts to exploring outside its own solar system and so the push was on to design and build interstellar spacecraft capable of moving man out into the galaxy. In 2156, the first exploration craft were sent to Alpha-Centauri, Earth's closest neighbour. When they got there they reported that there were eleven planets in the system, two of which could support humans. After the Centauri system was thoroughly explored, the exploration craft returned to Earth's solar system and were readied for voyages to other stars." This is only the first paragraph of several pages of introduction which basically says: "You find the remnants of an ancient undersea civilisation and decide to explore." So, what have we got for this lengthy scenario? Well, a sci-fi (of sorts) text adventure based under the sea, in much the same genre as Sea Base Delta. Written with MAGT v.1.6, this is only the second such game I have come across and as such, it still has some novelty value to me. There is a single title-page picture (an EGA graphic of the sea-station, quite nice, if simplistic) as well as an OCEANA.VOC file included. When I started the game, it correctly detected my Soundblaster card, but I have yet to hear what this .VOC file does, so I can't comment much on it. Still, since there is only one picture, and one sound file, this is still a pretty standard text adventure. One thing that turned me right off at the beginning was a squishy character font, which was quite unreadable and would probably induce eye-strain after even a short while. Fortunately, you can just delete or rename the OCEANA.FNT file and MAGT automatically reverts to bog-standard, easy to read, IBM font without crashing or displaying any error messages. There is also another fairly useful implementation in Oceana, a menu system. Press ESC any time during the game and you get a pop-up menu. With this you can completely re-style the look of the game, the colours, sound etc. Also, you can choose another menu-bar for the verbs. With this you move your arrow keys to highlight a selected verb, press space or enter, and then highlight the noun you wish the verb to work with. This is quite nice for checking what verbs are available, but doesn't really do much for the game. I found I could type the commands quicker than I could highlight them. It also highlights certain verbs that didn't seem to work. There are some synonyms omitted, such as OUT for LEAVE and others which are an obvious oversight on the programmer's side. There are also numerous typos such as: "hull patiching machine" and "centerd", though these are not particularly annoying, even funny at places. A few minor bugs also make an appearance, such as trying to put the wrong coloured keycard into a slot: "PUT CARD IN SLOT" = "THE SLOT IS ALREADY TOO HEAVY". I quite enjoyed this game, though non sci-fi fans would undoubtably find it a bore. There are some nice ideas, but one or two commands are a tad too tricky to be acceptable. The text is quite descriptive, even though the author doesn't always mention the exits from the location description, making LIST EXITS a familiar input. As with the normal AGT games, typing "EX BUTTONS" when there are buttons mentioned in the text, but not accounted for by the programmer, you get the message: "WHAT BUTTON? THERE ARE NO BUTTONS HERE!" You also get dumped back to DOS when you die, making the whole lengthy business of loading again necessary. My main grievance with this game is one that never fails to annoy me. It is the time limit. After a set number of turns, you die. You start getting warning message about 15 turns in advance, but by then you're probably doomed anyway. Why programmers see fit to include this amazes me. In some situations, then it fits in well. Say, you have four turns in one location to unarm your enemy before he kills you. But to encompass a whole game under a strict time limit is very annoying when you are trying to examine everything to gain a clue. Adventuring is supposed to be a nice, lazy way to experience something different. I don't think a mad rush to get the game over with is needed, if the game is good enough then I want to savour it, get the most enjoyment out of it I can. I would give this game a much higher rating if it didn't penalise me for enjoying the scenery. If, on the off-chance, you are one of the masochistic people who actually *like* time limits, then ignore my ratings. All in all, quite a nice little sci-fi game, if it weren't for the time limit. Grimwold's ratings: Graphics - 6/10 (One picture only) Sound - 0/10 (Haven't found any yet) Puzzles - 6/10 (Mostly finding different coloured keycards) Atmosphere - 7/10 'Grabability' - 5/10 Overall - 4/10 - o -