HOG #1: STONEVILLE MANOR [HOG = Horrible Old Game]
(A BASIC text adventure on SynTax disk PCPD 283 by Randy Jensen)

                    Review by Bev Truter

In referring to Stoneville Manor as a H.O.G. I'm only partly
serious, and partly tongue-in-cheek. These clunky old dinosaurs
written in BASIC, probably in the early eighties, show exactly how
far text-adventuring has advanced in a decade or so. But although
more recent offerings on the text adventure scene are bigger,
better and brighter in every respect, it's fun to wander back down
Memory Lane sometimes, and dig out some of these elderly
adventures for a few hours of nostalgia....and irritation.

Firstly, I'll list some of the (many) moans and whinges I have
about Stoneville: The BASIC.COM supplied with this game refused to
run it, so I had to ferret about for an old copy of GWBASIC to get
the game up and running. The instructions (type "Y" when asked if
you want to read them) tell great big whopping lies - SAVE GAME
doesn't work (says OK, then proceeds happily with the game without
saving); END GAME the same (says OK, then sits and waits patiently
for inputs from you without quitting) - you need to use
ALT/CTRL/DELETE to exit the game and reset the computer; CLEAR
SCREEN *should* redescribe your current location, but instead
responds with "undefined line number in...". LOOK in any form is
quite beyond the capabilities of Stoneville, EXAMINE must be typed
in full, INVENTORY doesn't work - try "take inv" instead - Omigod!
Most infuriating is if you try anything as complex as "examine
xyz", and xyz happens to be something other than the 12 or so
nouns programmed for a description, then the game responds with a
surly "DON'T UNDERSTAND!" Finally, the text is an eye-jarring
bright blue on black background - try not to squint too hard while
playing, it leaves dreadful furrows on the forehead.

Well, having aired all those gripes, on with the review of
Stoneville Manor. The aim of the game is to enter the miser's
house (oh yes, another breaking and entering and stealing game)
and find the 3 numbers that will open the combination lock on the
safe.  There is no scoring system, and the game covers about 35
locations.  Puzzles are *very* thin on the ground, the best one
being collecting the 6 objects needed to construct a hot air
balloon (most of them lying around in plain view), and then flying
it across a chasm. There's a neat bit of simple animation when you
get your balloon airborne, but if you possess anything more
complex than a 286 PC the "flying balloon" sequence will whizz by
faster than a speeding bullet.

If you are playing this with a B&W monitor, you'll never find the
third number needed to open the safe, as when you type in the
command "dive" the screen goes entirely black, giving the
impression the whole lot has crashed horribly. But no, on a colour
monitor all is revealed - in the underwater scenes the text
changes from fuzzy, out-of-focus royal blue on a black background
to black text on a blue background; it's just that it's
understandably impossible to read black text / black background on
a B&W monitor.

So...where were we? Oh yes, the numbers needed to open the safe.
These numbers are randomly generated at the start of each game, so
there's no point in trying to skip a few puzzles by using the
numbers you found in a previous game, it doesn't work. Since there
is no SAVE function (despite the instructions insisting there is)
you'll probably have to restart several times from scratch
<moan, groan> if you're determined enough to finish the game.
Death is infrequent, fortunately, given the lack of a SAVE
function; and if you inadvertently end up in hospital you can
always return to the game by typing "get well"; rather a nice
touch - it truly demonstrates the power of positive thought in
recovering from injury.

The game begins on Main Street, outside the general store, the
hospital and an old manor. There's a trail to the north which ends
at an unjumpable chasm, and going south from Main Street takes you
through a forest to the shores of a lake. There's no fighting or
enemies to outwit, unless you count the imported serval that's
blocking a doorway, and mostly the game consists of just wandering
around tersely-described locations, picking up various objects,
then working out when and where to use them.  When you've found
all 3 numbers for the combination on the safe it's time to gallop
back to the old manor, and try your hand at a bit of safe-opening.
But oo-e-e-r-rr, what's this - the numbers don't work!! Oh no!!
After all those hours of ballooning and snorkelling, to get so
close to the end and yet unable to open that !@#$% safe. DON'T
UNDERSTAND!

You might get the impression from this review that sitting and
watching traffic lights change colour would be marginally more
interesting than playing Stoneville, and you may be right. But I
still can't resist delving into my diskbox of "oldies" now and
then and having a go at finishing some of those HOGs.









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