CURSES by Graham Nelson
         (Text adventure for PC on SynTax Disk 780)

                 Reviewed by Marion Taylor

For sixty generations a curse has been on the Meldrew family,
dooming one person in each generation to undertake a futile quest.
Mad Isaac Meldrew (1705-1792), a noted antiquarian, believed that
the only way to break the curse was for someone to actually
succeed. And you, Andrew, as the current heir of the Meldrews and
the hero (perhaps victim would be a better description) are just
about to embark on this task.

Not that you have any intention of attempting anything so
foolhardy, all you're presently doing is looking for your tourist
map of Paris. You and your family are about to go there on holiday
and you've been told to look for the map. A simple task, they said
as they told you not to come back until you had found it, but
you've been all over the rambling old house and now you are back
in the attics. Considering the amount of clutter, you realise that
this could be a long job but you've no idea just how long and
where it's going to take you.

Once again you have a look in a pile of old teachests. The only
thing left in them is a book of the family history, sighing, you
pocket it. The only visible members of your family are one of Aunt
Jemima's cats, Austin (a helpful hint there, depending on which
part of the Attics he's in, or a positive nuisance) and Aunt
Jemima herself, busy with her beloved daisies in her Potting Room,
but she's too unhappy to help you. All that can be heard from the
rest are the sounds of doors opening and closing and footsteps
outside, apparently loading up the car.  This then, is the
introduction to version 5 of Curses, an Interactive Diversion by
Graham Nelson.

Of course, finding the tourist map is the least of it and, as you
would expect, you won't get it until near to the end of this long
and intricate adventure. Before you can really get going you'll
have to find some way to placate Aunt Jemima. Kissing her could
help, I thought, and indeed it did for about a second. I even got
5 points on the score, but such is the author's sense of humour
that as soon as I left the Potting Room the 5 points were
immediately deducted. The explanation for this was that it would
mess up the final score line!

This adventure moves you through a wide range of time and space
and you meet a huge cast of characters. You'll discover a tomb in
Ancient Egypt with sarcophagi. Wander through Ancient Greece,
meeting Andromeda, Homer, Apollonius and may others. You'll have a
fatal encounter with a huge Kraken and meet Zeus a couple of times
and there's Madame Sosostris, a fortune teller who keeps turning
up and who is very important to the game. You'll also come up
against some Druids, ghosts, a dead ancestor and many others too
numerous to mention. You can also take a trip to Heaven and
another - if you dare - to Hell, and there are Tarot Cards to
puzzle over. There are secret passages and hidden entrances all
over the place.

Rods of Power are a feature of Curses, first of all finding
objects that can be turned into them, figuring out how to change
and finally how and on what to use them. There are nine rods in
the main game and another in the endgame. The Rod of Returning,
for example, takes you back to the Attics from wherever you may
be. I don't think this can be construed as giving away a vital
hint, it's pretty obvious what you would do with it. Figuring out
the use of the other rods is intriguing, particularly when you
experiment on yourself. There's a magic word to discover which
will move you round some of the locations and a couple more which
I will leave you to discover for yourself.

You might think that, given the size of this game, the number of
locations would be huge but the use of repeated visits to the same
place at different time zones makes it relatively easy to map.
There are basically only two small mazes, one of which you visit
in three different time zones. Mapping this one (a garden hedge
maze) couldn't be simpler. Simply climb a tree outside it, have an
'examine' and there is the map of the maze laid out for you. The
other is a mousehole maze and that is simple enough. So if you
detest mazes, don't let them put you off.


During the game, various quotations (mostly irrelevant) appear on
your screen which I found interesting. You can turn them off if
you wish. All the usual commands are here including 'oops',
'plain' turns off the highlighted text and the quotations.  The
rest of the commands are as you would expect. You can carry (given
that you've found a rucksack) every object in the game and that
includes a two foot high stone! There are 110+ things various
littered around and nearly all of them have a use.

Although I'd rate this as 'difficult' (but not of course to Neil
"The Master" Shipman - he'd bash through it in a week!), there are
plenty of hints scattered throughout. Looking up your ancestors in
the History of the Meldrew Family gives a lot of clues, looking up
people like Andromeda in the Classical Dictionary does the same
and looking up various dates in the Book of Curses gives even more
information. There are two ancient languages - a hieroglyphic and
a demotic writing and the key to solving both is in the game.
There is also a set of Etruscan numbers.

When you've completed Curses, but only then, you're given an
'Answers' option. This gives you list of the points you have
scored but not, alas where the missing points - if any - are. As I
write this I'm one point short! In 'Answers' there's also a Trivia
Section which gives a fascinating run-down of the background to
the puzzles.

All in all, an engrossing and thoroughly enjoyable text adventure.
I'd rate it up there with the Unnkulians and that's a quite a
compliment coming from me. It's tricky but not impossible and I
very much enjoyed the author's sense of humour. Finding out the
use of the Rod of Stalking really made me laugh.







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