MURDER ON VIOLET ISLAND by Centaur Software/Stephen Claypool A text adventure on SynTax disk PCPD 993 Review by Bev Truter I wish I knew how old this game was - if it was written in the early to mid-eighties there might be some excuse for the primitive overall feel of the game; but there's no reason to keep on churning out stuff like this in the nineties, with a huge range of game-authoring systems available to everyone. MOVI is a splendid example of exactly why the shareware system doesn't work, viewing the shareware system from a disgruntled player's point of view (i.e. me). But before I proceed with that knotty topic, here's the plot, the story, the aim of the game in MOVI. You are a private detective who has been hired to protect a Mr. Violet, who is a tycoon living in a mansion on a small New England Island. [So far, so good]. You catch a ferry to the island at 6pm, but arrive at Violet Island too late to save your client. [Oops]. You find Mr. Violet lying face down in his bedroom - murdered. The next ferry arrives the following morning at 10am, so you have one night to solve the crime and arrest the criminal before he escapes. [Well that's one clue already - the murderer is apparently male]. The suspects are the Maid, the Butler, Mr. Green, Mr. Brown and Mr. Black. [What quaintly original names - heavy sarcasm]. Now that bit's over, let me return to the topic of games that are distributed as `shareware' for a brief paragraph or two. If a shareware game is enjoyable and entertaining, then it's only fair that the author should expect a (usually small) fee for it, and it's a pity that more players don't cough up the requested amount. BUT.....in the case of MOVI and a few other games I can recall with ghastly clarity, the request for payment is absolutely outrageous. How can an author possibly be so deluded about the imagined worth of a game he/she has written?? The idea of anyone paying money for this heap of old codswallop is unbelievable, but stranger still is the amount of money the author requests - $12 to register the game, $5 for a hint book, plus $1 if you want MOVI on a 3.5" disk. So all up he's asking $18 for his game (doing some lightning arithmetic that's about œ12!), and probably complaining bitterly that the shareware system doesn't work. Well it doesn't work for rubbish like this - he'd have to pay me (a fairly substantial amount) to play MOVI through to the bitter end. To add an extra sting to the insult of asking $18 for game + hints, he adds ..."if you use this program, send money and/or suggestions to the author". Note the word "use". Presumably if you play the game and loathe it, you should still feel obliged to send off the cash.....get real!! Well, on with the review.....MOVI runs from a single .EXE file. The current location, obvious exits and items of interest are shown at the top of the screen. There's no option to change the screen colours, whatever they may be - everything appears as orange-on-black on my 286 monochrome monitor. The game uses a two-word verb/noun input, and `examine', `look' and `search' have to be used frequently, as you get a different response for simply `looking' compared to `searching'. EXAMINE has to be typed out in full. Although there's a SAVE option so you can save a position at any point in the game, you can only reload a saved game after quitting. Objects are difficult to manipulate with such a limited vocabulary, and the author's pet brainwave is having about half the doors in the house closed initially, so before you can travel in any direction you first have to check for items such as `wdoor' or `ndoor' in the current location, then type in "open wdoor" and "open ndoor" etc. to reveal another exit. Wow! A really good idea, Stephen. It's so fascinating to type in "open ndoor" over and over again. [Heavier sarcasm]. There is no score in MOVI - instead you type STATUS to see how you're doing, and this lists the evidence you've found so far and also gives you a percentage rating. (I gave up at 8%). You need to find four bits of evidence to solve the crime - murder weapon, motive, character witness (???), and an eyewitness. Discovering an eyewitness might prove a bit tricky, given the extremely limited two-word conversations that are possible with other characters in the game. E.g. You can try "ask maid" and you'll get the response "ask maid about what (one word)"; to which you can reply "murder", or "butler" or whatever. (The Maid told me there was a hidden crawlspace in the cellar when I asked her about "murder", but I reckon she lied - there wasn't. Every other topic of conversation bored her witless). There are oodles of objects lying about, most of them apparently red herrings, and many with dubious spelling, e.g.`champaigne'. Beyond getting, examining or searching objects there's not much else you can do with them, and you can only cart around a fairly limited amount of items. There are no puzzles or problems beyond wandering about looking at/searching and collecting various odds and sods, and unlike other similarly primitive text adventures, you can't even use anything you collect - each item is only of use as a potential clue for solving the crime. Yet another gripe is the use of the command "go". You can't "climb tree" or "climb pole". Oh no. You have to "go tree" and "go pole". Even the simple but effective "up" would be better than this. Another way of spicing up any text adventure would be to make characters in the game memorable in some way, but in this game interaction with the other game characters is far too restricted to make the game even remotely interesting. The limited time you have in which to solve the crime is also a nuisance as there's hardly any chance of you getting through the game in a single attempt. So each time you start from the beginning of the game you have to scuttle off and explore a different set of locations if you want to visit all the rooms and meet all the characters. Presumably after several false starts you are able to bustle through the game in one shot, having established what to do and where to go in previous attempts. MOVI possibly had about 80 - 100 locations, and might have been less boring with fewer locations. No atmosphere, cardboardy characters, unbelievable locations and poor design add up to a game which can't possibly whet your appetite or arouse your interest, and it becomes simply unplayable and unbearable after a few minutes. But all the above is just my opinion - does anyone out there view Murder on Violet Island differently?? ENJOYMENT 1/10 ATMOSPHERE .5/10 DIFFICULTY 3/10 FINAL COMMENT Boring - avoid unless you're a dedicated masochist. - o -