SKI ADVENTURE
      (TADS text adventure, part of SynTax Disk 1000)

                  REVIEWED BY PETER CLARK

This is a fairly small adventure with around thirty locations. It
is not particularly difficult and the only problem I had with it
was in the difference between English and American word usage.
(Cars have trunks in America and boots in the U.K.) There were
several spelling mistakes and more than one glaring bug. It looks
as though the game has not been within several miles of anything
remotely resembling a play tester.

You begin the game outside some
sort of ski resort and find yourself unable to go anywhere except
inside. There is a car parked outside but this is useless so far
as transport in concerned. It was here that I had the Boot/Trunk
problem. There are several things to be found in the car but I
only found a use for one of them. Many of the locations inside the
complex are devoid of any puzzles or objects to be discovered. I
only found a few. Two were useful, one I eventually ate and the
other was purely decorative. I cannot see what the point is of
including a location called Empty Closet that is just that.
Nothing in it and nothing to do while there. This was the same
with several other locations in the game. Going out of the complex
to the North I thought that the game was at last beginning to
improve as I found a couple of objects that looked as though they
might be useful. Finding an out of action ski lift and a control
room nearby I though I might spend some time getting the lift to
work but the problems were so easy that I was soon in the lift and
away to the top.

At the top is another similar complex in that it had rooms where
there was nothing to do. There were all manner of cupboards etc to
explore but the only objects found were completely useless in the
game or decorative. Upstairs I found a door leading North which
didn't exist. You couldn't go through it or even examine it and in
a nearby office I somehow picked up something that had no
description and appeared in my inventory as, "a ...." Luckily I
never found a use for it whatever it was!

Exploring the lower reaches of the building I found a use for the
wrench that I got from the car. After completing this action I
returned to the outside, picked up and put on my skis and headed
to the east. At the furthest point east that I could go I
discovered a fire hydrant. It is not shown in the location
description and the only way to discover its existence is to type
"Examine all". Using the wrench once again enabled me to get to my
campsite and thus complete the game. A points system operates
through the game but at the end I had only accumulated 30 points
out of 100.  Where the rest were obtained I haven't the remotest
idea.

I cannot recommend this game as anything but a quick half hour's
bit of fun. It is a pity as the idea behind it looks quite good
and the possibilities are there to be developed. It rather looks
to me as though the author got a bit fed up with it and wrote a
quick ending leaving many loose ends.

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