SANCTUARY by Conrad Button (1989)
          A text adventure on SynTax disk PCPD 990

                    Review by Bev Truter

Ah yes! I remember Conrad Button well - author of the dire "Dark
Continent", and the marginally better "Time Traveller". Conrad
Button has produced 2 series of text adventures, one titled
Educational Games and the other Adventure Games. Sanctuary is one
of the Adventure games, and the author rates its difficulty as
"master"; one level more difficult than "expert". Well, that's a
huge overestimation of the game's difficulty for starters -
beginner/intermediate would be nearer the mark. Although Sanctuary
is quite large (90 locations) it is written in a very simple
style, and contains many interesting but fairly easy problems and
puzzles; mainly finding various objects and deciding how to use
them on other objects.

Sanctuary is set on Earth in the not-too-distant future, and
here's the plot verbatim:
The year is 2015 - 5 years since a nuclear war devastated Earth.
You are one of the survivors. Most people who survived the
holocaust have been mutated by the radioactivity. These mutants
hate normal humans and are attempting to destroy them so that they
alone can rule Earth. You have been searching for others of your
kind but without success. Your search has eventually taken you to
the Pacific Northwest. [i.e. of the USA].

So, off you go in search of some human remnants on the American
continent, bearing in mind that radioactivity is still hanging
about in a few areas, as are the mutants. Though fortunately you
can soon find the necessary equipment to deal with the radiation
and the lone mutant. The gang of mutants will take a bit longer,
and you'll need some help from another character in the game - Sly
Stallone, eat your heart out!

There's a short READ.ME file containing hints on how to play the
game and adverts for Conrad's other games, and when you get down
to the nitty-gritty and load Sanctuary, there's another short
screenful of general hints, plus an option for changing your
screen colours.  (I can't comment on this feature, having played
the game with a B&W monitor). Although there is a reminder to save
a game frequently (this is a tad time-consuming), there's no way
of restoring a saved game from within the game; instead you have
to quit, then load a saved game from scratch. There is no status
line, no scoring system, and no long room descriptions, so the
overall feel is of a very terse, shorthand game. For example; You
are in a shop. You see:  baseball bat. Exits are: N S W.

It's a pity the author didn't go in for longer location
descriptions, as places like Spirit Lake, Crater Lake and Cascade
Mountains just seem to scream out for something more than a bare
statement of the location itself. Overall this is much like
Conrad's other game Time Traveller, only there's more substance to
the plot in this one, and it's not as irritating as TT. I know
Sanctuary doesn't sound too promising so far, but if you can stick
with the parser limitations, and ignore the lack of description
for locations and objects, this actually turns out to be an
entertaining game. It has a strong, well-developed plot, and a
logical geographical layout for all locations. Some of the puzzles
will keep you to-ing and fro-ing across this chunk of America
(Seattle to the north, Washington in the middle, and Oregon to the
south) for quite some time. I just had to keep plugging away until
I'd found another group of humans.....and sanctuary from the
outside world.

There were the odd misspelt (mispelled??) words, like "bisquit"
for biscuit and "allie" for ally, but mostly the writing was so
brief and to-the-point that there was hardly much room for
mistakes to creep in. Travel through the gameworld is well-handled
- you can travel by foot through the initial locations, but later
on you'll need to find other methods of transport to carry you
over water and through the air. Another plus factor is this is
definitely one of those busy sorts of games, where you rush about
trying out all sorts of things with various items at your
disposal.

It's unclear whether Sanctuary is freeware or not. There's no
mention of payment, although on one of the information screens
Sanctuary is listed along with some other of his games, with $12
next to it. The author also mentions that if you want to order any
games from Buttonware one game will cost $12, two games $17, or
you can order three games for $20. There's also a hint disk
available from the author for $10, which gives hints for all
Buttonware games in the Adventure Games series. If you like his
games, the 3 games for $20 sounds the best deal, but I doubt he'd
be getting any single payments of $12 per game. I think the answer
might be that Sanctuary was originally available only from the
author, along with two other games which aren't shareware; but now
Sanctuary is available on the Internet and can be downloaded and
distributed freely.

Sanctuary might be too simplistic and dated for some tastes, but
there were no hiccups or glitches in the programming, so the game
runs smoothly and you can progress fairly rapidly towards a
satisfying conclusion - which should take about one or two longish
evenings.
  ENJOYMENT 4.5/10     ATMOSPHERE 3/10        DIFFICULTY 5/10
 FINAL COMMENT A dated but moderately entertaining sci-fi game.
                              - o -