AN UNDERGROUND ADVENTURE WRITTEN BY MARK J. WELCH
   (This game is one of the adventures supplied with AGT itself
   and Peter has also supplied an Atari disk with the game on)

            Reviewed by Peter Clark on an Atari

This is quite small adventure and one which would be suitable for
a beginner as it is no way very difficult.

It appears from the introduction that you are a survivor of a
nuclear exchange and have been spending some time looking for any
other survivors. Why you should have survived alone is not
explained.  Anyway, you have heard tell of a system of underground
tunnels that were constructed to house the bigwigs during such a
war and you set out to see if you can find them. Well I never!
Just as you find a large blackened pit you also find a length of
rope and begin the climb down into the unknown, dropping your
flashlight as you go. You lose your grip on the rope just far
enough from the bottom of the pit to survive the fall without
injury and, there at your feet is your flashlight and an iron bar.

This is where the game really starts and you enter the tunnels
through a convenient door to the west. You shortly come in contact
with a wolf!  Goodness knows how it has survived in the tunnels
for so long as throughout the rest of complex there is no food or
water to be found.  You will also encounter a mutant and the same
applies here. Their poor quality of life can soon be ended as they
can be put out of their misery by using the iron bar or a handy
laser gun that is found close to the entrance.

There is really little to do in this game after dispatching the
two aforementioned characters as it is then a matter of exploring
and mapping the game. There were a few objects to be found but
apart from scoring points for finding them they had no use. A
couple of the objects did find a use. One, a key, had an obvious
use and the other, a module, was the way of escaping the
underground complex. There were no real puzzles and far too many
useless locations. I found two large crates/boxes which were
easily opened but the contents were unobtainable and, as far as I
can see, had no purpose. I also discovered a fair number of locked
doors which did not need unlocking as there was no need to pass
through them.

As far as bugs were concerned there were no real howlers but the
usual fault in so many of these free games where the location
description tells you that "There is a red triangle on the wall"
and asking the game to "examine the triangle" produces the reply
"there is no triangle here." As someone who has written several
games myself, I know that this can easily happen but it does show
a lack of proper playtesting.

The game finishes in a different and quite abrupt manner and
although I managed to complete it without scoring the maximum
number of points, I did not get the feeling that I wanted to play
the game again to see what I had missed.

As I said at the start of this review, this is a game for a
beginner or one to pass away a spare half an hour.

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