KINGSLEY'S MANSION - by James Nixon
       A Text Adventure for the PC on SynTax disk 602

                    Review by Bev Truter

Well, this is another oldie (don't know about `golden', though...)
from ye olde SynTax vaults of yesteryear. Although this game is
dated 1990/1992 it seems much older than that for a variety of
reasons. Firstly, the parser is very limited - you can only enter
two-word inputs. Also many frequently-used words that scream out
for abbreviations haven't got any; eg Look, Examine, Inventory (!)
must all be typed out in full. Some nouns that one would assume
could be abbreviated are not - I naturally thought a "floormat" at
the front door could be shortened to "mat"; but no, only the
ponderous "floormat" does the trick. There is no status line
indicating number of moves, time elapsed, or even score, so it's
hard to judge how far you've progressed - after seeing 25
locations, are there 100 more to find, or only 5 more?? (Turns out
to be the latter.) Scorewise, there is none. This is one of those

games where you either complete it....or you don't, and along the
way you have no idea of how close to / far from the end you are.

What started me off on this review was a chance remark from
someone about how excruciatingly s--l--o--w Kingsley's Mansion was
to play - after each `discovery' you make there's a 7-10 second
delay before you see the outcome on your monitor, preceded by a
little row of dots thus:. . . . . . . ., presumably to try and
maintain tension and keep you in suspense. Unfortunately this
tactic only becomes irritating after a while, as you tap your
fingers and squirm about in your chair waiting for the next
screenful of text to appear.

I haven't the faintest idea how the author has programmed this
game - it seems to consist of about 20 .TXT files and one .EXE
file, so he hasn't used any of the better-known game authoring
systems.  Although it is not written with BASIC (at least, it
doesn't require the dreaded GWBASIC to run), CAPS LOCK has to be
on at the start of play. Grammar and syntax aren't too bad, but
there are the usual amount of spelling glitches - dissapointment,
fatefull, paneling, to name a few. I didn't see an address for the
author, or any nag screens for money, so this appears to be yet
another `freeware' game.

In the short but adequate Instructions section the author explains
that to activate some objects in the game you must "use" them; eg,
`use gun', `use screwdriver'; and warns you to "examine objects
VERY closely" - and he kids you not. Every location you enter has
only a short description, so to get more information LOOK has to
be constantly entered if you want to see a fuller description of
your surroundings. The author seems to have developed a strange
obsession with the command EXAMINE, just check the following
series of inputs required in one location:
   > Look
   > You are in a cellar with a painting on the blah...blah
   > Examine painting
   > It portrays a clown
   > Examine clown
   > His eyes seem to be leering at you.

   > Examine eyes
   > The eyes seem.......
Well, it did seem a tad unfair, not to mention unrealistic, to
have to wade through an interminable series of `examine this',
`examine that' just to discover the most basic information about
your surroundings.

Another minor problem was in trying to deal with fairly simple
nouns, like book, where there may be several nouns called book.
You soon discover that even simple actions like `get book' or
`read book' don't appear to work. Hmmmm.... What to do with the
book????  You have to first `examine book' to discover that it is
actually a diary, so only calling it a "diary" elicits a suitable
response.  The same goes for other books and pieces of paper you
find scattered about the mansion - each has its own particular
name, so "book" and "paper" are useless - you have to discover
exactly what type of book or paper is meant in each context. But
that's enough moaning about all the techie bits and pieces, so on
with the actual story/plot of Kingsley's Mansion.

You are lost in the woods on your way back from a rock-hunting
expedition, your only possession a rifle. (You need a gun?? To
shoot rocks??). As it's getting dark you decide to wait until
daybreak before continuing. You prop yourself against a tree, when
suddenly an old two-storey mansion magically appears. You've heard
rumours about this mansion appearing in these woods on the same
night every year, only to disappear before dawn after screams of
terror are heard within and a raging fire engulfs the mansion in
flames. Supposedly a mansion was built in these woods many years
ago, and was destroyed one night in just such a blaze. Dr.
Kingsley, his daughter Alexandria and their maid Rosa all perished
in the fire, and some people speculated that Dr. Kingsley went
insane and murdered Alexandria and Rosa, then in a state of
guilt-ridden madness he set the mansion alight.

So, here's your chance to enter the ghostly mansion and discover
what really happened, and perhaps by doing so you can put the
souls of all those affected at rest, and prevent this terrible
annual re-enactment of the house being destroyed by fire. You'll
first have to find a way of getting into the mansion, then you'll
have to deal with a few ghosts from the past, including the creepy
Dr.  Kingsley himself. By collecting and reading various bits and
pieces of information you'll gradually piece together the true
story of what really did occur that fateful night. The game ends
rather abruptly, just when it was getting interesting, and the
final message that pops up on your screen is that the story will
be continued in a sequel. I haven't heard of any sequel to this
game, so perhaps the author ran out of steam and ideas.

All in all, not too bad a game, and with an interesting mystery /
ghost story plot. Although the gameplay was painfully slow, and
the continual need to examine things a real pain in the......neck,
Kingsley's Mansion will probably provide enough interest and
entertainment to keep you plugging away until you've completed it
- approximately 3 afternoons and 30 locations long. (I'm not too
sure about the number of locations, and I have absolutely no
intention of replaying the entire game to check; but about 30-40
locations seems about right.)


   ENJOYMENT        3.5/10
   ATMOSPHERE         4/10
   DIFFICULTY       4.5/10
   FINAL COMMENT    Perhaps it's your cup of tea, perhaps not??















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