ESCAPE FROM THE ARBORETUM by Nik
             A text adventure on disk PCPD 1183

                    Review by Bev Truter

Arboretum takes your average run-of-the-mill plot of being
kidnapped by aliens and then spending the whole game trying to
escape from another world / spacecraft / time, and turns it
completely upside-down. In this adventure you start on earth, and
your aim is to try and escape your somewhat dull existence by
tempting a bunch of aliens to come and kidnap you. Aha! Sounds
like a fun game to play; and here's the very brief introduction to
Arboretum to set the scene.

You live in a drab, unexciting world called Arboretum, where fun
and enjoyment are totally alien concepts. Therefore your aim in
this game is to contact an outside force and escape the evil
mind-numbing powers of the Arboretum. As the story opens you find
yourself alone in the living-room of your house.

This is all the introduction you get before plunging headlong into
Arboretum, a freeware TADS game of medium-level difficulty with a
wide range of fairly easy problems to solve and obstacles to
overcome. Although some of the puzzles / problems are unoriginal
and obviously recycled from other old text adventures they are
still fun to tackle; and the torch problem had me stumped for
ages.  The torch is easily found, as are the batteries for it -
but it obstinately refuses to work when switched on.  Hmmmm ...
perhaps another light source altogether might do the trick?

I'd describe Arboretum as a moderately difficult game, with a
total score of 200 points and scenery covering about 80 locations.
Much of the game is spent wandering around your strangely-deserted
neighbourhood, with most of the population absent altogether.
There's your own house to explore, a neighbouring house, the
church and graveyard, the local pub, and a few shops. You'll have
to work out a way of getting across the canal which eventually
bars your progress to the west, and how to get past a dog in the
beer garden of the pub. The few signs of habitation you find
indicate that this is a suburban hippy community in which you
live, and you do stumble across one semi-comatose example of
hippydom - apparently too stoned to either provide help or be a
hindrance ... but then looks can be deceiving, and the hippy does
eventually produce an odd bit of ornamentation necessary to
complete the game; after a bit of encouragement, of course.

Some of the live "problems" you will have to deal with are a slug,
the dog, a colony of fleas, a rather sweet zombie and the corpse
of your local (un)friendly shopkeeper. Examining everything
usually gives a clue about how to overcome the present problem or
how to deal with a particular animal / creature; and it helps to
read all signs, labels, pieces of paper, etc; anything, in fact,
that has writing or a label on it. Finding a nice assortment of
hardware would be handy too, but where *is* all this equipment?

Wandering about in some of the outdoor locations reveals a
strangely-shaped patch of scorched grass - could this be a sign of
the "outside force" you must contact? A thorough search of the
indoor locations will provide you with a possible means of
contacting the aliens, but there are a few problems involved
with physically getting this object, and then later on, using
it.

Arboretum is a very busy game, with plenty of puzzles for you to
think about and tackle all at once, so it's fairly non-linear and
you can progress quite rapidly to approximately halfway. I found
it interesting and entertaining, and although the location
descriptions and writing are not outstanding, there is a definite
sense of humour lurking throughout this game, despite the rather
bleak scenery of the first few locations. Arboretum grabs your
attention from the outset with its many and varied puzzles, its
frenetic pace, and its huge variety of quaint red herrings. It's
very difficult to tell which items are useful, and which are there
only to provide some humorous touches - some unlikely-looking
objects turn out to be very useful, and quite a few functional
ones are utterly useless. The "hat" is priceless...a truly
memorable item, one no adventurer should be without!

There's a strange compulsion in playing Arboretum - you can work
out most of the time what item you need to solve a particular
problem; but where the heck is it? And if you find it, will it do
the job you thought it would? All in all this is a charming,
engrossing, amusing game to play; congratulations, Nik.
















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