Maiden 0f the Moonlight and Small World (On Disk 1068) Reviewed by Graham Raven Being a virtual computer illiterate (ie not a teenager) I enlisted an expert (teenage) computer whiz kid to look down his nose at me whilst attempting to get these programs to run. I'd already tried pressing various keys at random, and uttered various unrepeatable curses, in addition to setting the machine to run in MS Dos mode having failed miserably with Windows. However neither my expert user nor I could get any sense what so ever out of the above. Perhaps I need the TADS system installed? Maybe, maybe not. After a couple of weeks I asked my son to look at these programs once more, he tried one or two incomprehensible things which appeared to be based on typing meaningless symbols onto the PC screen, and then he suddenly said "Oh yes..." and typed various more utterly incomprehensible things into the machine and hey presto, both now games run! I assume we're now running under TADS, a first time for me! Now please bear in mind that I've previously had traumatic experiences with text only adventures, and if I end up rating either of these games above 'U Bend' then they've done really very well indeed. I suspect that my mind doesn't really work the right way in order for me to really enjoy this kind of game. For example in Maiden the program tells me that there's a path made of flagstones to the west (if my memory serves me right). I tell the program to examine the flagstones, and it replies that it has no idea what 'flagstones' are! "Oh yes you ***** well do" I say. My frustrated comments of course, get me nowhere. I must say that I none the less enjoyed many of the descriptions of the various locations I visited and I stayed with the game at least 15 minutes before giving up completely! I have the strange feeling that there's a fascinating game hidden within this program somehow, and if I only spoke its 'language' I'd be quite enthralled. As it was I scored a massive total of zero points out of a maximum possible of 16. (I actually achieved this same score two nights running!) I then turned my attention to Small World. Good idea for a game, you're trapped on an eight foot diameter world. From the start every direction is South (you are stood at the North pole!). The program initially doesn't recognise directions (every direction is South, yes I know that!) but you can travel to the morning, afternoon, night time etc. Things quickly start to get confusing. This is soon followed by things getting progressively more confusing, and that rapidly leads to banging your head against a wall stage! Aha, but there's a cheat mode! Oh well, I've stuck with the game for a whole ten minutes after all, I'll try cheating! I'd tried 'Hint' - which the program responds to, and I'd tried 'Help' and the program responds to that as well! I now try 'Cheat' and the advice given is about as helpful as that given by a black cat at midnight in a dark cellar when the bulb's blown ... and the cat isn't there either (and it doesn't speak human anyway!!) This is nearly as bad as an old Speccy game I remember playing once (Alone in the Dark?), where typing 'Help' resulted in comments like "Try thinking!" Seconds later I had amassed the grand total of nil points, had several further bruises on my head and had given up completely. Despite saying all that, you know these programs aren't half bad. They are entertaining, and I'm sure they should be 'fun' to play. I just wish that I could make some sense of them. I'm sure the fault is mine, but I can't make any progress with either of these games, and that's a pity because I feel I'm missing out on a lot of fun. Ratings for both games: Flatulent! - o -