STARSHIP COLUMBUS
         A Text Adventure Game on Syntax PD 520

                  Reviewed by Tom Lorimer

Starship Columbus is a text adventure game, a story in which you
take on the role of the principal character and control his
actions. Your character in this case is a young man or woman on
board a huge starship which is your world.

The Columbus is Earth's first attempt to reach the stars.  Since
all space travel is limited by the speed of light, the Columbus
will take many years to reach the world which is its destination.
In fact, you have never seen Earth, you were born on the Columbus,
as were your parents and grandparents. The only sight you have had
of anything outside the Columbus, even the stars, has been in
pictures.

A starship is a place of limited resources, and of late the
authorities have found it necessary to impose stern measures to
keep the population of the Columbus within acceptable limits.
Every person, on reaching maturity, must pass a test to determine
whether he is qualified to live as a citizen of the Columbus.
Those who fail the test are given a choice: death by laser beam or
be exiled into the Abandoned Corridors, the areas of the ship
which are no longer in use. The choice is simple, either stay here
and die, which means that the game is over, or go east into the
Abandoned Corridors and try to survive.

Your first task is to find food, which is easy enough but the food
is sealed inside cans and guess what, you have no opener.  Once
you have solved that poser and continued your search of the
corridors, you come across a Games Room with a Video Arcade
Machine in it. There is also a locked door in the west wall which
can only be opened by solving the Puzzle on the Video Machine. On
completion of this Puzzle, the Machine then gives you a coded
message to solve which looks like this,
MSPVNCLQYCLJSPA! JX ZSQ DSQYF YJWU LS UPLUN
LBU PUEL NSST ACZ, "TQNNCZ SGUP LBU FSSN."
Definitely one for all you Code Breakers out there.

Once you have sussed that one out, the answer you give should open
the door in the west wall. Then guess what, you find another
Cryptic Message. If you type "Help" at this point, the Game will
tell you to find someone to assist you. Finding him is the easy
part, but keeping up with him is a bit more difficult, especially
when he keeps disappearing behind a locked door. Once you have
managed to get past this door, you are given a final Challenge to
complete the Game which involves a number of precision moves,
which, if done correctly, will keep you one step ahead of instant
death.

Although I finished this Game in a few hours, I found it a very
enjoyable one to play. I liked the idea of only having a handful
of objects to worry about, and the puzzles were all very logical
to solve. I got a lot of satisfaction out of playing and finishing
this game in one sitting, that I would recommend it to anyone who
has a few hours to kill.

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