DEADLY LABYRINTH - Author: Frank West (1992).
 A Text Adventure for the PC(PD 338), ST(PD 337) & Amiga(PD 869).

                Review by Bev Truter on PC.

Seeing Deadly Labyrinth recently released on PD 869 (SynTax Issue
38) for Amiga-owning subscribers has prompted me to write this
review of it. Deadly Labyrinth has long been one of my personal
all-time favourite contenders for the "Worst Text Adventure"
prize.

This is a Standard Level AGT game, classified as Freeware, and
inspired by the Death Gate Cycle series written by Weis and
Hickman. The author apparently intends "improving" the game at a
later date by adding more rooms to most Levels (Oohh No!) and more
Levels to the game <groan>. It currently consists of 8(?) Levels,
and a huge improvement would be to delete about 6 of them. You
might have gathered by now that this is not one of the best text
adventures I have played....but wait, let's begin at the
beginning.

The Introduction sounds interesting enough, and lulls you into
thinking the game itself might prove to be quite fascinating, but
no such luck. The gist of the Intro. is that "Centuries ago the
Enemies came and threw your whole race into a magic prison called
the Labyrinth. Those controlling the Labyrinth's magic have
disappeared, and now your prison has become a deadly one. The
Labyrinth has gained a life of its own, and regards you as a
threat to its survival. Some of the puzzles and paths in the
Labyrinth have been solved by those who were clever enough and
strong enough, but only one has completely escaped the Labyrinth -
the Forerunner, and only he can return and help those still
struggling to escape." Presumably you play the part of the
Forerunner, returning to the Labyrinth to aid the rest of your
people in their escape; although in practice you never actually
stumble across another soul (well up to Level 7 anyway, which was
as far as I persevered), and your meanderings around the various
Levels seem strangely lacking in purpose.


After loading and answering Yes or No to the usual "Do you want
instructions?" screen, you are greeted by what looks like an
insect with a varying number of legs missing, crawling up the
right-hand side of the text. This is actually a map, (sort of),
showing directions available for movement. You begin the game with
the First Gate disappearing behind you, and faced with the
daunting task of fighting your way through another 7 Gates, (not
to mention the boredom....but more of that later). Most of the
Levels are constructed like mazes, with the same type of
description for each location - e.g. in the 1st level you trudge
through "a vast area of empty sand". The 2nd level is a maze of
misty? foggy? twisty? passages, followed by yet another desert
<yawn>. However, there are 3 fairly simple problems to solve
before you can make your way through the Gate to Level 2, and this
keeps your interest from flagging too soon.

Your first task is to find a container for water and fill it from
the appropriate pool (1st level), then get some food (2nd level).
Your score (Hit Points) gradually decreases until you have the
foodpack, and immediately after passing through each gate you must
wander around doing nothing until your Hit Points build up to the
new maximum. Attempting to do battle with monsters while your
score is low is always fatal. Ah yes! The monsters. Each one is
either a snake, a spider or a scorpion. Rather disconcerting, as
after you've killed it you could reasonably expect it to stay
dead; but no, this is not the case. Each monster apparently has
miraculous powers of restoration, and you'll come across it again
in other Levels, only bigger and stronger. This game turns out to
be a lot more RPG-ish as you proceed, with long sequences of "kill
X with Y" and "cast Z at X" having to be repeated ad nauseum until
the monster dies.

As you pass through each Gate your Hit Points increase, tattoos
signifying added protection against monsters appear on your arms
and legs, and you gain another spell. After finding food and
killing the obligatory monster (the snake, this time) on Level 2,
you pass through the 3rd Gate to the most interesting Level of the
game. At last! Some variety in scenery! This level also contains 3
more object-related puzzles to solve, and a different monster to
kill (a gigantic white worm, for a change. All very Edgar Allan
Poe-ish). Defeating this creature poses a tricky problem, using
brains instead of the usual combination of brawn and spells.
Hooray! But just as I was getting all excited at the prospect of
more interesting Levels ahead, with the promise of some decent
text-adventuring, I passed through the 4th Gate, and it was all
downhill from there on.

If you survive the monsters, the sheer boredom will get you.  4th
level - another maze, 5th level - another desert, 6th level -
another maze. Ho-hum. In the end I just gave up - couldn't care
less if my character succeeded or not. In fact, I took great
delight in deliberately committing suicide by attacking monsters
when my Hit Points were abysmally low, but even this diversion
wasn't enough to generate any further enthusiasm about trying to
finish the game.

Perhaps a compulsive RPGer would find this game more interesting,
but I don't think so, somehow. It seemed to combine the worst of
both worlds - too lacking in atmosphere, problems and storyline
for a text adventure, and too simplistic and repetitive for a
CRPG. Some of the factors contributing to the general
unplayability of Deadly Labyrinth would have to be its lack of
atmosphere, poor room descriptions, zero feeling of involvement,
lack of interesting puzzles, non-existent plot, and last but not
least, too many predictable fights with repetitive monsters. Aside
from all this, there seemed no point to it all - why are you
wandering so aimlessly around? With no-one in sight to rescue,
your entire Quest just seems so vague and devoid of purpose. With
few redeeming features apart from the fairly interesting Level 3
section, Deadly Labyrinth is doomed to languish unplayed in my
"too boring" drawer - unfinished, unlamented and unloved.

    ENJOYMENT:       1/10
    ATMOSPHERE:      1/10
    DIFFICULTY:      4/10
    BOREDOM FACTOR:  9/10
    FINAL COMMENT:  If you are stuck on a desert island with a
                    battery-run computer and only a copy of Deadly
                    Labyrinth for company, then try it.
                              - o -