Adventure in the Dragon's Lair - author Kevin Shelton Adventure in the Magic Land - author Kevin Shelton Skullduggery - author David Jewett (3 adventures on SynTax disk 202 for PC) Reviewed by James Judge This is the second PC compilation that I have reviewed for Sue, the first being the Steven Neighorn collection that had me riveted to my keyboard - slagging the collection off, that is. So, this collection of games has got to prove to me that the PC collections aren't just outdated games slung together to try and sell a couple more games before giving up the goose. These three games are quite old, the youngest being a sprightly seven years old (when you read this, it is, at the moment, six years old) so that didn't give me too much hope as they were all programmed by the authors from scratch and, when an author does that, they can sometimes lose the thread of the game and only try to show offætheir new utility, often making quite a cock up of things. Right, on with the first game: ADVENTURE IN THE DRAGON'S LAIR This game was made in 1988 and puts you in the shoes of an unwilling volunteer (why are you always an unwilling one, eh? Why can't you be an adventurer brimming with enthusiasm for once?) who has been told to nip up to the dragon's lair, kill the dragon who killed your beloved king and retrieve all of your ex-king's possessions so that the new king can defeat the barbarians that are invading your lands. Now, don't think that there is much resting on your shoulders. You start the game off in front of the dragon's cave, carrying nothing and looking quite a pillock - you know, entering a dragon's cave without any form of protection at all. South leads you back to the village where you must go when you have completed your quest and north takes you one step closer to death. After a brief exploration you may have found a few objects, met the dragon and gotten yourself killed. I say MAY because, as it says in the on-disk instructions, all but three objects are placed randomly in the adventure and so is the dragon. You see, the dragon moves one turn for each one of yours so it completely random as to when and where you will meet the dragon - he may be patrolling just three or four rooms or wandering around like a b)headed chicken (but much bigger). This random placing of objects made me write enable the disk with the game on it and prepare to save a game. Oh dear, there seems to be no SAVE or LOAD facility - disk or ram based. None whatsoever. This means that is you are caught by your boss reviewing this game you can't save it, load up the program you are meant to be working on and, when he is not looking, boot it back up again. This also means that you may be one step away from completing the game when you come across the dragon, make a slight spelling mistake and then get killed, having to start all over again. Hi dee ho. Life's like that though, innit? What else about this game? Well, you know NORMAL adventures have a GET command and a DROP command? Well, this one doesn't. Instead you type in 'G' (the game only accepts the first letter of each command, so don't bother typing in GET, TOSS (TOSS is the same as DROPping in this game, as the D in DROP is taken for DOWN, not DROP) and then the game cycles through each object in the room, asking you whether you want to drop it or not. This is OK for picking things up, but when you have to drop something and it was the last thing that you had picked up it can be a pain cycling through ten objects. Talking of objects, there are only 15 in this game. Most of them are objects that you would wear, with only three or four being things that you would handle. Until you get a holdall, you are unable to carry more than two handle-thingies which is a bit of a pain. There are, though, plenty of wearable objects and here is another downfall of the game - you can wear both a crown and helmet upon your head. Hi dee ho. Life's like that though, innit? Finally there are a few instant deaths. Not all that many but there is no warning at all. You go south and AAAAAAARGH, you fall into a black hole that the dragon put there just for your death (?). The instructions make no qualms about this and say that there are three of these deaths, two are avoidable and the third isn't. So it is a matter of exploring until you've found them, restarted and figured out what you need to get past them. Oh, and there is a maze. This game is appalling. If it was given a good interface that included a score, status line, load/save game commands, a proper object handling system, good text descriptions, less of the cramped object lists when you type I (for INVENTORY), better puzzles, warning (no matter how subtle) of the deaths and an incentive to complete the game it would be half way decent. As it stands, though, you just require patience until you have mapped out the whole game area (which will take at least two goes at the game) and then.it is a matter of hoping that you don't run into the dragon too many times. If it was improved with just the better system commands etc. it would be an ideal introduction to neophyte adventurers who were into dragons and their lairs. Rubbish, complete and utter. But life's like that, innit? Oh, before I forget, this game is shareware and for the princely sum of $10 you will encourage ol' Kev to write some more of this ****. ADVENTURE IN THE MAGIC LAND This is going to be like a Neighorn reunion methinks. This game gives you no indication of what you are meant to be doing and, only after careful reading of the disk instructions, did I realise that you had to go and visit the king before you knew what you had to do. For those of you who won't be buying this game (don't blame you) what you've got to do is retrieve the king's crown from a nasty dragon who has stolen it. Erm, er, um, this is sounding a bit familiar, isn't it? Oh yes, more or less the same storyline as the previous game. 'Nother black mark against Mr. Shelton. This time you are plopped onto an 8 by 8 grid where all the action takes place. So, that gives you (and by using my wonderful mathematical type brain and a calculator) 64 rooms in all. Wow! That isn't a large adventure but Kev was very kind and provided a map with the game in the MAGIHINT.DOC on the disk. All that needs doing is a few walls put into place. Where you are plopped on this grid is completely random, apart from the four instant death locations (marked on the map, at least) this could mean anywhere. When I played this game I had to travel through most of the rooms to actually get to see the king so I had a fair idea of what to do next before I was given the go ahead and I had figured out what I was meant to do (I distracted the dragon long enough to see the crown, hehehe). Hi dee ho, life's like that though, innit? Once again, there is no save/load command so it is a one sitting game and that is a big turn off for me (just like cheese and fish, actually). Thankfully, in this game Kevin has improved the system with better GET and DROP commands. We are no longer allowed to TOSS our objects and we can examine them! Not that that makes any difference - you just get a 'NOTHING SPECIAL' reply. This is another terrible game by the man himself. Being written a year later than LAIR, it does have a few improvements, but not enough to warrant a thumbs up from me. This game is shareware as well and it seems as if Kevin has figured out that his games are dire - he's only asking $3 for this one. I haven't completed either of these games as I feel that they are boring and I've got plenty of other things to review that should be far better than these two (well, I hope they are, if not I may start banging my head on the keyboard in complete frustraion. I wonder if the insurance would cover that...). SKULLDUGGERY I'm not going to review this game, we all know how terrible this Kevin L. Shelton is, don't we? Bye, have a good time reading about some better games. Hold on a minute... this is by a different author, oh good, someone else to make fun of. I think I will review it. A FEW DAYS LATER Hello, 's'me again. I'm back. Knackered from trying to enter this castle that is supposedly protected by a ghost. You see, this man said to all adventurers (the brave and cowardly) that if they could enter this old house type place, we would have a big reward. Well, it's proving to be much harder than I thought it would be and so I have saved my position to tell you about it. This is a traditional text adventure with good puzzles, interesting solutions, quite a few atmospheric touches such as the weather and quite a few good bits of text. You start the game outside of this house where you can either go south to the house or north to a shack and graveyard. At the house you can either enter it or follow a fence round to be ravished by a fair maiden. No, wrong game. By a pack of BIG dogs. At the shack you might find something loose (if you look close enough) and just to the east of there is a grave where a slight moment of waiting leads to a ghostly figure appearing, muttering nothings - they aren't, from I can discern, sweet. The game is different in the way that it has got a text description to the left of the screen and, on the right side, it has got a rather nice map. Nothing spectacular (it wouldn't look out of place on a BBS) but it does its job well and makes the game a bit easier and that much more enjoyable. You can only see a small part of the complete game area, but it is enough to give you a good sense of where you are compared to other places. All in all this game is well presented and quite professional, a refreshing break from the other games on this compilation. Well done David. CONCLUSION: No, this is the part where I round the compilation up, not another game. The first two games in this compilations are rubbish - nothing else to say about them. They may keep you happy for all of two minutes and are perfect if you want to improve your mapping skills (well, the first is as the second game is already mapped for you). The last game, Skullduggery, is the meat, veg and gravy of this compilation - it is worth paying out œ2.50 just to get this gem. True, it isn't as good as games such as Jacaranda Jim or Humbug but it still a good game. If you enjoy straight forward adventures Skullduggery is for you. There is a small sprinkling of humour and the rest is just gameplay. - o -