The Palace Of Deceit 2.1: The Dragon's Plight and Quenzar Both on SynTax Disk 973 (Palace is also part of Disk 941 ...) Reviewed by James Judge on a 486sx 1. The Palace of Deceit ----------------------- Over the years that I've been reviewing for SynTax it has come to pass that the majority of the games that I review are complete and utter tat. Unfortunately this is a sad comment upon the standard of shareware and PD games today, or maybe it's because of the fact that I'm a grumpy git. Probably a bit of both, if the truth be known. Looking at the mountain of disks that Sue has sent me it seems to have been ages since I saw a good shareware game - the last was probably Deathwatch, or thereabouts. Anyway, I have this general rule for the software Sue sends me - if someone says it looks "OK", "good" or "playable" then I read it as being a bit on the dodgy side. Sue seems to have cottoned onto this fact as for the last few games that she has said looked "OK" I've returned with completely negative reviews. So, what did she say about this one? "...looks good, so is probably crap!" My, my, not only is she an editor she's becoming a prophet too. Palace was written in an early version of Visual Basic, and so needs VBRUN200.DLL to run (stick it in your WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory and keep it there for any other games that may need it). You also need Windows, surprisingly, a mouse and a VGA graphics card along with 800K of RAM to get this 'game' up and running. The story goes along the lines that you are a blue dragon called Nightshade who has been kidnapped by the evil Garth (a guy in red pyjamas, I think) to be tortured so that you can reveal the whereabouts of the dragon land to enable Garth to kill all the dragons. Fair enuff. You start the game in a dungeon cell and within one move you come across the only real puzzle in the game - that of finding a hidden switch. The game is meant to be a 'point & click' and, in as far as you point at things and then click the mouse button this game fills the description well. However, if you're expecting anything along the lines of SOMI2, Full Throttle or Day Of The Tentacle then you'd better stop reading now. If you're expecting animation of any kind you may as well stop reading. The interface in the game is very simple - move the cursor over an object/person/thing of interest and click and then the game will do anything that is relevant with that object, whether it's killing it, lighting it, taking it, speaking to it, pushing it - whatever. So much so for a wide range of options... So, with this interface it is very hard to implement puzzles, so ol' Cliff has decided to make you play 'hunt the pixel'. Veteran point'n'clickers will now what this is - looking for some object by waving the pointer across every pixel in the game until the cursor shows that there is something there. In most games you might have to do this once or twice for a small object. However, in Palace you have to do it in every room. The reason for this is that there are loads of hidden switches, and when I say hidden I do mean hidden - completely indistinguishable from the surrounding. The only time you know that you've found one is when the cursor changes to an 'object' arrow. You then click on it to open a door and you're away to find the next 'puzzle', or switch. The version that I was playing was the limited shareware version. After I got it up and running I had completed it in fifteen minutes - and ten of those were spent looking for one switch which I just kept on missing. Apart from looking at switches there is nothing to this game, other than a bit of instant death, and how we love all of that! The graphics are infantile with the actual game window only being about an eight of the screen in size, the rest being taken up with irrelevant buttons such as 'arrange' and 'help' and 'info'. Due to the size of the game window the graphics look even more primitive and you wonder just how old this Cliff is. Sound is non-existent, rather like the playability, really. What else can I say? Cliff said in the README file that he's been making games since he was twelve because he loves it and he's now in college, planning on working for Lucasarts. All I can say is that it's a shame that he didn't learn anything in those six plus years on how to draw/write a good game/do animation/be original/create a puzzle as well as a hundred and one other things that are wrong with this game. This offering reminds me of something a thirteen year old kid would knock up in an afternoon just to see what a new routine for VB does - the plot is poor and very weak, the puzzles are non-existent, the flow of the game is jerky and disjointed, the graphics are appalling, the interface is useless and Cliff is asking $27 for the rest of the adventure. Some hope this kid has! If you buy this game you will kick yourself forever onwards - five minutes of boredom is all you'll be getting. And if Cliff ever does work for Lucasarts I think I shall hang up my mouse and become a gardener instead... Dodgy, very dodgy, but don't despair - on the same disk you get another game!... Quenzar by Peter Lok -------------------- Yes, I've saved the best for last. The two games are unrelated (thankfully) so this one has a few good points. Quenzar is billed as an RPG which needs the standard Windows getup to (as well as VBRUN200.DLL) to make it run. You play a hero (surprise, surprise) who has, just on a whim, decided to rid the world of evil, so off you trot into a dungeon, which seals itself after you enter, to kill the evil wizard Quenzar (maybe this is the guy the game is named after... hmmmmn). The game is played by looking at a ten by ten grid upon which you (a 0) walk around in by using the directional arrows provided. Each time you enter a new room you either get damaged by a trap, attacked by a monster or left alone just to rummage through the contents of that room. Most of the rooms are empty, so there is, really, very little to be done in the hundred rooms other than fighting and avoiding the traps (which is impossible as you have no prior warning that you're about to enter a trapped room. The aim of the game is to find a gold key which will then let you enter Quenzar's chamber where you must fight his bodyguard (a gargoyle) and then kill the man himself (a pretty tough fight). Along the way you must pick up some potions, rings, armour and, of course a weapon. The game is very basic with rudimentary graphics and a playing style which verges on the inane. You just wander aimlessly around the rooms fighting and looking for certain key items (of which there are about six) and then ensuring you have enough energy left to kill Quenzar at the end. There is no skill involved and everything relies upon great big dollopings of luck. To add excitement to the game there is one enemy that roams from room to room - now, don't get too excited! Registration (a paltry $5) gets you the full version which randomly generates new dungeons for your playing delight . Compared to Palace this is a great game. Compared to nearly any other RPG this game looks drab, plays poorly and is, overall, a huge pile of rubbish. If you enjoy wandering around grids with minimal interaction and just clicking on a 'fight' button to try and kill something then this may be up your street. However, if you're normal you'll look at something better than this (Ragnarok, for example). To conclude - this disk is a huge disappointment. The only high point was the low registration price for Quenzar - the rest of the disk (both games) was full of very, very low troughs. Avoid - not nearly worth the effort of installing. - o -