Hodj 'n' Podj
       Boffo Games / Virgin Interactive Entertainment
                   PC CD-ROM   -  $25.00

                  Reviewed by Neil Shipman

Steve Meretzky is one of the icons of the computer gaming industry
with a pedigree stretching way back into the early 1980s when
Infocom ruled the adventure world with consistently top quality
text adventures. With titles like Sorcerer, Planetfall, Leather
Goddesses of Phobos and Zork Zero to his credit, Meretzky moved on
to Legend Entertainment when Infocom was in its death throes and
wrote the highly amusing Spellcasting trilogy for them before
setting up his own software company, Boffo Games. Hodj 'n' Podj is
their first production and it is quite a departure from your usual
adventure fare.

According to my dictionary, a 'hodge podge' is a 'jumbled mixture'
and this is a pretty good definition of the great variety of games
which make up this complete computerised board game. There are 19
mini-games which can be played either on a stand alone basis for a
few minutes at a time or as part of the larger game in which you,
as Hodj or Podj, take on the task of rescuing Mish and Mosh, the
king's daughters.

On viewing the fairy tale at the start, you learn that the
beneficent King Medlee (I'm pretty sure his first name isn't Alan,
but his wife - the king's that is, not Sue - always refers to him
as her royal 'luvvy-poo', so I can't be sure!) is upset because he
has no male heir. In his declining years and with no more children
on the way thanks to some tampering with the royal diet by the
nefarious Prime Minister Salmigundee, King Medlee has the
brilliant wheeze of issuing a proclamation revoking the rule of
primogeniture so that one of his daughters might succeed to the
throne of the Kingdom of Po-Porree.

Salmigundee, who had planned to become ruler in the event of there
being no male heir, suddenly finds himself outflanked by this bold
break with tradition. What can he do but kidnap Mish and Mosh and
hide them at a secret location somewhere in the kingdom? King
Medlee and Queen Melange are understandably distraught until there
arrive two princes, Hodj and Podj, from a distant land. These two
youths tell the king how they had learned that his daughters were
missing and that they have found out that Salmigundee is to blame.
Medlee immediately enjoins them to search for Mish and Mosh saying
that whoever finds them may wed the princess of his choice and
will become the next king of Po-Porree.

At the start of the game you are given the choice of playing as
Hodj or Podj and you can either play against a human opponent or
the computer. You can select Easy, Medium or Hard as your level of
difficulty and can customise the game to be either Short, Medium
or Long. A short game usually takes about 30 minutes (although the
first couple of times you play it may take a bit longer until you
become familiar with the board layout), a medium length game is
about an hour and a long game in the region of two hours.

The goal of the game is, of course, to rescue Mish and Mosh from
wherever Salmigundee is hiding them and take them back to the
castle in Po-Porree city. To accomplish this you must play a
number of the mini-games which are dotted around the kingdom.
Success in these will enable you to collect the information, items
or money you need to find the princesses. Short games require 1
object and 2 pieces of information, medium games 2 objects and 5
pieces of information and in a long game you will need 3 objects
and 8 pieces of information.

There are 35 locations spread throughout the countryside and
linked by a roadway marked off into squares. At the beginning of
your turn the computer rolls the electronic counter for you and
indicates the number of spaces (furlongs) you can move (usually
between 9 and 19). You move around the landscape by clicking on a
square you want to move to then sit back and watch your prince
make his way there. Sometimes, on an otherwise unremarkable
stretch of road, you may be lucky enough to stumble upon some
treasure or good fortune which allows you an extra turn or,
conversely, learn from the running commentary that some minor
mishap occurs to delay you, making you miss a turn.


You are not always restricted to the roadway and you'll have the
opportunity of taking a boat down the Ribald River or riding the
skycar between Pasteesh and Mistle-Laney Park. There are also a
couple of short cuts, a tunnel under the mountains and a secret
passage to add the variety of ways of moving around the board.

Before you really get to know the lie of the land it can be
difficult to remember just which mini-game is located where.  To
help with this you can browse beyond the edges of the current
display by right-clicking near the borders. In addition, there is
a bird's eye view of the whole kingdom available by clicking on a
tiny magnifying glass at the top of the main playing screen.
Thoughtfully, this map has also been provided in full colour at
the end of the detailed instruction booklet which comes with the
game.

To play any of the 19 mini-games which make up the complete board
game you simply enter their locations. If you are unfamiliar with
the type of game the rules and methodology are available by
clicking on a scroll at the top of the game display screen. You
can also alter your audio setup at any time from this scroll which
can be particularly helpful in some of the games in which sound
and music play a crucial part. If you are playing the games in a
stand alone fashion rather than as part of the board game you also
have an Options button to enable you to customise the game to suit
your standard of play.

So what are all these mini-games? Well, here's the complete list
with a very brief description of each one:

Archeroids:
A sideways, medieval version of space invaders.

Art Parts:
Rearrange the 16 rectangles in this electronic jigsaw against the
clock.

Barbershop Quintet:
A card game similar to solitaire.

Battlefish:
Electronic battleships with fish instead of ships.

Beacon:
Turn multi-coloured fog to one colour as the lighthouse beam
rotates.

Cryptograms:
Letter substitution game featuring famous quotations.

Dam Furry Animals:
Whack the beavers as they pop out of their holes.

Fuge:
Knock the blocks out of a circular wall with a ball bouncing off
an arc-shaped paddle.

Garfunkel:
Remember who plays in which order in this 'Simon' type game.

TH GESNG GME:
Guess the title, place or object before the computer fills in all
the missing letters.

Life:
Place your villages strategically and watch them thrive or
otherwise as the years roll on.

Mankala:
Sort shells into pits following a complex set of rules so that you
end up with more than your opponent.

Maze o' Doom:
Make your way through the onscreen maze with invisible traps to
catch you out.

No Vacancy:
Roll the dice and close all the doors from combinations of the
scores.

Pack Rat:
A traditional pac-man maze game with killer turtles pursuing you.

Peggleboz:
Traditional solitaire with pegs in a board.

Poker:
Gamble your crowns in this card game.

Riddles:
Solve riddles like: 'I have two sides, one edge and no corners.
What am I?'.

Word Search:
Find words in a letter grid with categories like instruments,
vegetables, sports teams, cheeses, etc.

Success in six of these games will see you rewarded with some
information. In order to keep this secret from your opponent you
are given a code (eg 6 butterflies or 3 snails) which you then
have to look up in your player's cluebook. The information might
be that you need a certain object, or that you need to speak to a
particular person or that Mish and Mosh are being held in a
specific location.

Six more games yield items as diverse as a 'radio controlled
flying anvil', the 'beret of invisibility', a 'killer cotton
swab', the 'chisel of ennui' and the 'enchanted kumquat'. Usually
the items you win (or find on your travels) are not the ones you
need to enable you to enter the location where the princesses are
being held. However, there is a General Store and a Black Market
where you can buy other items as well as a Pawn Shop where you can
sell the ones you don't need.

You can see what you have accumulated on your travels by clicking
on the inventory icon at the top of the main screen.  This also
reveals how many crowns you have to your name and shows a log of
the information you have gathered.


Once you have found all the items and information you need and
have rescued Mish and Mosh you still have to get back to the
castle. This gives your opponent a last chance to stop you which
he can do by landing on the same square as yourself and
challenging you to a game of your choice.

It pays to practise playing the various games on a stand alone
basis if you are to succeed in a difficult version of the board
game but you need hardly any experience to return victorious in an
easy version.

One further option at the start is the 'Grand Tour'. This allows
you to play 18 of the mini-games (poker is the one excluded) in
order, totalling your score as you go and entering high scores in
a Top Ten Hall of Fame.

The fairy tale introduction, each individual mini-game and the
complete game board which spreads over some 30 odd full screens,
are all displayed in exquisitely detailed cartoon-style graphics.
As you make your way around the Kingdom of Po-Porree through the
Swamp of Satire, past the Lake of Levity to Cape Chuckle via the
Mountains of Mirth, subtle animation catches your eye. Flags
flutter atop the castle walls, waves break on the shore, a mermaid
splashes her tail in the water and the lighthouse beacon flashes.
Add to this two hours of digital audio comprising Jeremy Behrens'
archly mellifluous tones as the narrator and commentator on your
progress through the game, the voices of numerous other actors in
the mini-games, and a varied but always appropriate musical score
and you have a very playable, electronic, multimedia board game to
amuse you from anywhere between 5 minutes and a couple of hours.

Hodj 'n' Podj is more than a computerised games compendium as all
the mini-games play an integral part in the complete board game.
The hand-drawn, digitally inked artwork has to be seen to be
appreciated and the overall implementation of the game design
which was carried out by Ledge Multimedia is faultless. This
unusual first offering from Steve Meretzky's Boffo Games
demonstrates that this maestro is still using his undoubted talent
for making kids of all ages chuckle in front of their computers.

Installation:

Hodj 'n' Podj comes on one CD-ROM and installs and runs under
Windows 3.1 or Windows 95. Installation was simplicity itself with
options for 'healthy' (12Mb of hard disk space), 'thin' (7Mb) or
gaunt (a miserly 1Mb). Video for Windows is required but if you
don't already have this on your system you can install it from the
CD-ROM. Detailed, easy to follow instructions are given on video
set up and sound and music, changing virtual memory if necessary,
and so on.

Minimum System Requirements:

386/33 MHz processor
4 MB RAM plus a 4 MB swap file (or 8MB RAM)
640 x 480 Super VGA monitor and graphics card with 256 colours
CD-ROM drive with minimum of 150KB/sec transfer rate (single
speed)
8-bit Windows compatible sound card
Windows compatible mouse and mouse driver
MS-DOS 5.0 or higher, Windows 3.1 or higher
7 MB available hard disk space (recommended)
Windows compatible joystick and driver (optional)

Availability:

I found it impossible to buy Hodj 'n' Podj in this country.
However, surfing around on the internet I ended up at Chips & Bits
in America. They had the game on offer at the bargain basement
price of $25 plus $6 worldwide airmail and $2 handling charge. It
took about two weeks to arrive and, at the exchange rates then
prevailing, the total cost of $33 converted to œ21.84 on my Visa
card. This software company is well worth checking out if you're
having trouble finding a particular title as their range of items
in stock is enormous and there are many games at knockdown prices.
They can be contacted at:

Chips & Bits Inc, P.O. Box 234, Dept 10742, Rochester, VT 05767,
U.S.A.
Tel: 802-767-3033 Fax: 802-767-3382
E-mail: (Orders/Questions:) cbisales@sover.net
E-mail: (Customer Service:) cbiserv@sover.net
Internet: http://www.cdmag.com/chips.html

And finally - Trivia:

Steve Meretzky's middle name is Eric. Bet you didn't now that!
Stu Galley, the author of Witness, Moonmist and Seastalker and a
colleague of Meretzky at Infocom, was one of the playtesters for
Hodj 'n' Podj.









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