Review of Damp Camp
             Reviewed on a P200MMX October 1998

                       By Nick Edmunds

Damp Camp is a tentative offering from two fourteen-year-olds
calling themselves Mujisoft.  Although a recent visit to the
Mujisoft home page informs us that they have since been reborn as
JamJar Software. They also claim to be maniacs and if you ever play
this game you will probably agree with them.  The game is based
around one of the Muji teams pet hates - camping.  As such it
begins with a little diatribe about how boring camping is.  The
intro then explains that two tons of miracle grow has been
deposited on the camp site over night and that you are now trapped
by fifty foot grass, oh and your friend has gone insane.  Boring
camp indeed, sounds just like an average camping trip to me - not.

It's quite a small game, having only eight locations and has
limited interaction, weak plot structure and basic puzzles.
Synonyms are very limited and vocabulary options are often awkward
and restricted.  There are occasional logic bugs in the
programming, but not to any major extent and, as I played Release
One of Damp Camp and have dutifully mailed my bug report to the
Mujisoft home page, maybe these bugs won't exist for much longer.

In its favour Damp Camp contains some good humour, an amount of
originality and occasionally it made me laugh.  It's certainly not
the worst game I've ever played. The credits section explains that
Damp Camp was not intended as a masterpiece, but more as an initial
foray into writing games, and it certainly achieves its goal.
Thus, while Damp Camp is never going to become a classic of our
time, it does prove that the Muji team have the ability to work
together and the potential to write decent software in the future.
This is of course assuming they don't get sidetracked, like the
rest of us did.  I certainly hope they make a go of it.

On the whole, `The Damp Camp' is quite a decent little game.  I
almost called it nice for a moment, but it's not and I don't think
the lunacy that is Mujisoft ever intended for it to be nice.
Although nice, doesn't necessarily mean fun, and Damp Camp is fun.

The JamJar website is at: -
http://members.aol.com/rdean88849/jamjar.html
















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