DREARCLIFF MANOR
       A Text Adventure for the PC on SynTax disk 746
              Author: Software Works (c) 1986

               A 2nd opinion - by Bev Truter

After reading Richard Batey's review of DrearCliff in SynTax issue
39, I was all ready to gird up my loins and rush in to defend this
dated but still very enjoyable game. Fortunately I decided to have
another quick look at it before charging vehemently into print,
with the immortal words "...one of the best games I've EVER
played" ringing indignantly from my lips. I could recall vague
rosy memories of poring over DrearCliff about 2 years ago, lost in
admiration for all those novel problems with such clever
solutions. I must have spent about 4 weeks staggering blissfully
through its vast number of locations, before giving up about 50
points short of the total. Funny, it never occurred to me then to
question the morality of happily shooting 3 other treasure-seekers
- it was just necessary, and done as quickly as possible. Well,
to return to the saga, I resurrected all my old maps, and off I
went for another trip down Memory Lane.

But hang on just a minute! Where were all those quaint problems I
remembered? The fascinating Pig Problem? The Philosopher's Stone
Problem? The Boat Problem? (or rather, the lack of a boat)?  They
were there all right, but not looking quite so difficult or
intriguing. The what-to-feed-the-dog problem, and how to get the
ring from the corpse still had me baffled, though. So in some
areas I agree with Richard's assessment - Yes, this is a very
large game at about 170 locations, with roughly half the locations
in the Manor grounds, and half inside the Manor. Although the
exterior locations contain almost nothing apart from 2 necessary
items, the interior locations are a drastic improvement. And yes,
it does seem morally indefensible to shoot 3 people, but if you
want to finish the game, then I guess you have to grit your teeth
and do it. And yes again, it's a pity the authors designed the
game to dump you back into DOS each time you're killed, but at
least reloading isn't nearly as time-consuming as it would be in
an AGT game.

The way "Restore" worked was a good idea too - each time you save
a game, you are sent to DOS, and then you can restart the game at
any saved position by typing DREAR SAVENAME <enter>. DrearCliff's
positive points - the interest-grabbing storyline, playability,
good location descriptions - probably outweighed the negative
aspects for me. So although I don't see it now through such
rose-coloured spectacles, I'd still rate it as a pretty enjoyable,
longish game; with plenty in it to keep the average text
adventurer interested and busy for more than a few days. I felt
Richard's judgement of it as "...a bog standard text adventure"
was too harsh - it's not nearly THAT bad!  Mind you, it's
certainly not "one of the best games I've ever played", either -
it couldn't be THAT good!

    ENJOYMENT               5.5/10
    ATMOSPHERE              6/10
    LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY     6.5/10
    FINAL COMMENT           Worth giving a whirl on your PC
                              - o -