THE ACORN COURT by Todd Murchison
             A text adventure on disk PCPD 1193

                    Review by Bev Truter

After seeing Sue's remarks in issue 54 of SynTax, about Acorn
Court having plenty of synonyms although it's a very small game, I
was tempted into playing it. What a delight! This is indeed a
*very* small game - one location, to be precise - but it has been
beautifully written and competently programmed. The only thing you
have to do to "win" in Acorn Court is to find a way out of the
single location, and this doesn't take long; but it's great fun
fiddling about with the 3 major items of scenery in Acorn Court -
the oak tree (no, it's not climbable), the automatic ball machine
(used for tennis practice, normally), and the old well (containing
what all good wells in adventure games contain).

The game responds to a variety of commands, and understands many
different ways of tackling problems.  It gives the impression of
being written mainly as practice for a couple of puzzles dealing
with the handling of multiple objects, and I hope this little
sample game turns out to be the forerunner of a longer game by the
same author.

The single location, the "Acorn Court" of the title, has great
atmosphere, thanks to a longish and well written description. The
same goes for the scenery and most of the objects lying about.
Acorn Court is definitely a game for those people who enjoy
figuring out what to do with novel bits of machinery, and solving
a few puzzles along the way. It's not a difficult game (would take
about twenty minutes to complete) but it's great fun - short and
sweet!







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