FLAMEOUT
       A Spectrum Text Adventure from Zenobi Software
             Author: Laurence Creighton (1994)

      Review by Bev Truter on PC (Spectrum emulation)

`Flameout' refers to the aeronautical term for a plane catching
fire, or the engines burning out....or at any rate something nasty
and combustible like that. <I've quickly had another peek at the
Intro, and it appears flameout means the simultaneous failure of
all 4 jet engines on a plane.>

Well...the title sounded ...ummm....sort of techno-speak / dull,
and the first few locations looked pretty mind-numbingly ordinary,
and as the plane you were travelling in is filling rapidly with
smoke and about to explode there was hardly any time to do
anything before getting repeatedly killed, accompanied by
skreeking sound effects of explosions and "THE SMOKE IS GETTING
THICKER!!!" popping up on every second line on the monitor. Uh-oh,
not a good start I thought, beginning my 12th loading of the game
from scratch. But persistence finally paid off, because once you
do find a way off the plane both game and scenery take a turn for
the better, and what looked like a fairly tedious adventure to
begin with rapidly transforms into something much more
interesting.

The Story so far: For years now you'd been planning a trip to
visit friends far away, so you booked your ticket, put the cat in
the cattery, cancelled the milk and set out on the journey of a
lifetime. The airline food had been enjoyable, and you gradually
fell asleep at some point during the in-flight movie. When you
awoke to find the cabin filling with smoke you thought for a
moment you were still half-asleep and that it was all part of the
film, but a quick glance around soon convinced you otherwise ....
this was REAL!! Will you be able to find a way out of the
aircraft, and if you do, what awaits you on the outside ......
only time and an inventive mind will tell.

In actual fact, when you escape from the aircraft you find
yourself in a small jungle clearing, in a strange land remote from
high-tech civilization. After wandering around for a while and
solving a few problems you meet an old man, who asks you to embark
on a quest to retrieve ..... but that would be giving too much of
the plot away.

As is usual for an emulated Spectrum adventure the speed of
playing is slow, the text on your monitor is huge, and unless you
use the `-g' switch when loading the emulator (Z80 -g) the
constant barrage of sound effects will drive you nuts. There's a
particularly horrendous grinding noise every time the plane
explodes, and a subdued but nevertheless irritating "plocckkk"
sound each time you tap a key on the keyboard. The limited parser
means input has to be mostly in the two-word verb/noun format, and
there aren't many synonyms either - eg, "insert xxx" will work,
but not "put xxx".  All the above makes gameplay generally a bit
clunky and ponderous, but if you have the patience to sit and
think about each problem and how to word possible solutions in a
simple verb/noun way you should enjoy this fairly short but
delightful game.

There are about 50 locations to explore, and an assortment of
puzzles to solve, including the usual amount of human and
non-human opposition to deal with. The game accepts all the
standard commands such as get (g), examine (x), wait and quit;
plus the `special' commands LUND (look under), LIND (look behind),
and LIN (look in).  If you type `look under xxx' it will be
interpreted as LOOK, and simply re-describe your current location.
It is also possible to change the style of typeface by typing in
either FONT 1 or FONT 2 during gameplay - the second font is
marginally clearer than the first.

Despite Flameout's rather old-fashioned feel, slow gameplay and
parser limitations, I found myself hooked by its strange
situations and rapidly improving storyline. This is very likely
one of those games that you will return to again and again until
it's finished (1.5 weeks and I'm not quite there yet!) Laurence
Creighton has done a good job of writing this adventure, with some
difficult problems to solve and at least one truly maddening
situation to deal with - someone doesn't appear at the obvious
place until you've discovered something near the end of the game;
but I must have wasted hundreds of turns in trotting hopefully
back through the game on numerous occasions before discovering
what triggered the character's appearance.

And lastly, before closing, could someone please tell me what to
do about an agile monkey???

   ATMOSPHERE    5.5/10
   ENJOYMENT       5/10
   DIFFICULTY      5/10
   FINAL COMMENT   Likeable Indiana Jones-type adventure

@~Contact Zenobi at 26 Spotland Tops, Cutgate, Rochdale, Lancs
@~OL12 7NX. Flameout sells for œ2.99 for PC, St and Amiga.





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