Pyramid Of Peril - by J. Whatty
      (Text adventure on SynTax 853 (ST) and 853 (PC))

             Reviewed by James Judge on a 486sx

AGT adventures - don't you just love 'em? Thanks to a
wonderfully easy programming language, the basics of which
you can learn in an afternoon, the adventuring community is
continually deluged by games from people who, having played
a couple of adventures, think they can come up with
something original, interesting and fun to play. Unfortunately
all but the exalted few do manage to do this and this game is
not original, it's not interesting and only by a flight of fantasy
as great as the one John Major had when he saw himself
winning the Mr Universe competition will you make this game
fun to play.

You start the game in a desert with just a half-buried pyramid
and a statue for company. You don't know what you're doing
there or where exactly you are, you don't know how to get into
the pyramid (Of Peril!) and you haven't noticed the rucksack
which is half-buried in front of your feet. Looking good already,
isn't it?

After a simple puzzle you can get into the pyramid and a few
simple puzzles later you've completed the game, having found
that the object of your quest is to retrieve your lost fiancee who
disappeared under mysterious circumstances a while back.
Leave her to rot is what I say and spend your time getting a
sun tan... Maybe I'm not entering into the correct romantic,
adventuristic attitude here...

Anyway, the game plays like all of the other AGT games that
you ever come across with its usual short comings - poor
parser when compared to TADS, annoying system messages
etc. In fact this game is worse than the majority because there
are two kinds of puzzles in this game - one is using items to
open containers and the other is using the same items to kill
monsters.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen - this game relies heavily on the
fact that you must face down terrible monsters such as
spiders, scorpions and cockroaches (stop screaming at the
back, I know you feel scared, but this is just a walk in the park
for us adventurers - hahaaa!) throwing each item in your
inventory at them until they disappear in the obligatory puff of
green smoke. As they do...

Once you've killed the monsters you've just got to open three
or four containers and you've completed the game - the last
puzzle is even completed for you by your girlfriend!

And that's all there is - open something, kill something, open
something else and let's kill something else, just for a bit of
variety, get your girlfriend (no hanky panky, now - you're not
married yet!) and escape from the pyramid (Of Peril).

Apart from the lack of problems in this game, there are also a
few other annoying aspects. The first is the way that the
parser lies to you. Until halfway through the game it doesn't
know the word 'dig'. When you're sinking, though, it finally
decides to accept the word 'dig' and lets you go on your merry
way. This is the only point in the game where I was stuck and
the solution bloomin' annoyed me.

Apart from that you've got the perfunctory room descriptions
with little sentences thrown in just for fun to add to the
atmosphere in the game, such as a stray paragraph "What
was that?". In those short paragraphs you've got 101 different
grammatical and spelling errors - none too noticeable, but
after ten rooms (in the whole game there are only about 40)
they start to grind as the author cocks up the spelling of
hieroglyphic, puts a question mark in the wrong place, misses
another comma and gets the structure of both paragraphs and
sentences completely wrong.

Oh, and let's not forget the way the game sometimes throws
you into rooms without your say-so. You open a door and the
game throws you into the room behind it without even a by-
your-leave.

Pitiful is the only word which I can think of to describe this
game. The only three redeeming features I can see are [1] if
you've got a pyramid fetish it may prove of some value (but I
doubt it), [2] if you need to practice your typing skills this may
prove to stimulate your latent talents and [3] the fact that it is
(from what I can discern) freeware.

One last gripe - the game doesn't even bother to give you a
score while you're playing, only at the end does the message
'you've got 1000 points' flash across the screen.

What? You want more gripes. OK - the game has a very strict
weight limit which is sometimes taken to the ridiculous and
detracts from the enjoyment <pah!> of the game as you have
to drop a shovel if you want to pick up a lace hanky. Yup...
Like, sure.

Avoid. Pyramid Of Peril? Load of tosh, if you ask me...
                              - o -