Faustus
                  RPG on SynTax Disk 1308

                 Reviewed by David Hayward

This is an RPG game involving four characters. The game is played
like a book. It starts with a young man writing the start of the
game/story. In the middle of the screen the narrator writes his
book. At the bottom of the middle is a black area where the text
that is going into the book is printed so that you can read it.
The left and right sections of the screen are split in half
horizontally. In each of the four parts is a picture of each
character; the Elf in the top left, the Mage in the top right, the
Dwarf in the bottom left and the Warrior in the bottom right.
Underneath the warrior's picture is a status screen. It gives
information about the level of the warriors, the score that you
have achieved, the day, the time, the amount of gold you have
amassed and the amount of time you have left before the party has
to have another meal.

Pressing any key on the keyboard skips the current section of text
and advances to the next bit of text. If you have not finished
reading the text before you press a key then it jumps to the next
part and you cannot go back.

   "Faustus was with his Master, the great magician Marlo. The age
   of the great darkness had been long forgotten in the land of
   Veltins.  Those were the days when evil sorcerers kept Elves,
   Woodfolk and nearly everybody in constant fear. He and four
   other magicians had been bestowed with great power in order to
   fight the forces of all evil. Ever since then a meeting of all
   guards was to be held every fifth year in remembrance.
   Kampanke, a member of the land of Krynn was also expected this
   year but... he never appeared. Gypsies, as well as travellers
   from Krynn had great stories about mysterious creatures and
   changes in the land of Krynn. Therefore, Faustus had sent
   Laits, a young magician, to find Kampanke. That was three
   months ago and Faustus has been waiting for a sign from him
   ever since."

This is where the story and the game begins.

After you have read the story you are placed into the game world.
You start at the top left corner of the map in a town. Your orders
are to find the young magician Laits. To complete the game all
four members of the party must survive to the end of the game. If
one of them gets killed then the rest will give up and the game
ends. So they all need to be equipped with some kind of weapon and
ammunition if the weapons need it (what good is a bow without
arrows???). The group also needs food to stay alive while they're
not fighting.

You can move in all eight, 2D directions, Diagonal, Vertical and
Horizontal, providing the square you are moving into is empty.
When moving around the town you can come across some buildings
that you can enter. Inside most of these buildings you will find
some kind of shop. To buy things you need gold coins, and you can
get these by killing the enemies in the game. Each enemy gives you
a different number of gold coins upon death.  Animals do not leave
behind gold. In one building is an Inn. Here you can have a bed to
sleep in, eat a meal, have a drink or gamble to get more money.
Again these cost money to do. In another building you can buy
food, armour or shields. Food is needed to keep the members of
the team alive. When you eat, a bar at the bottom of the status
area increases to the right and shows you how much time you have
left between meals. Each meal feeds the characters for twelve
hours.

Once you start fighting you will no doubt lose some hit points
(energy). You usually lose hit points even if you are fighting one
of the weakest enemies and you have shields! Once you have
finished the fighting (you kill the enemy/enemies) you can either
carry on moving and fighting or you can rest for eight hours. Each
character will take a two hour guarding period. This will regain
some energy per character and for the Elf and Mage only, some
mana. But if one of the characters falls asleep during his
guarding period then he will not wake the next one and then no one
will be on guard. This is usually all right but it does leave you
open to surprise attacks.

Mana is used to cast spells by the Elf and the Mage. The mage is a
more powerful spell caster than the elf. Spells that can be cast
are healing spells, fighting spells, protection spells and a few
others. These enable you to heal other characters, produce some
extra firepower during a fight (mostly a flame arrow) or protect
the group from attacks. These come in handy for lots of
situations.  The healing is useful for during an attack and also
after an attack before having a rest. The flame arrow can cause up
to 7 hit points on the enemy. The protection spells are handy
against the tough enemies and the strong enemies, but sometimes
they cannot concentrate to cast their spells.

The action in the game is well thought out. You don't just go
around killing everything you see. Some of the encounters with the
enemy give you the option to 'Greet' or 'Fight'. The greet option
works most of the time but for some enemies they just want to
fight you anyway. There are lots of characters that you can meet
in the game. There is the Inn keeper, the blacksmith, shop owners,
fortune teller, witches and goblin-type creatures.

Most characters require something from you before they give or
tell you something. The fortune teller wants 10 gold coins before
telling you some mysterious riddle that has you guessing for quite
a while. A good mini game to play is in the Inn. You can choose to
have a gamble with the Inn keeper. This will cost you 25 gold if
you lose. You are given five dices to roll. The aim is to score
more than the Inn keeper and win five rounds. To score points you
must have a 2 and a 4 in your hand to get any points. The other
three should be the highest that you can get. If you get more
points than the Inn keeper in a round you win that round. Win five
rounds and you have won the game. If you manage to get a 2, 4, 6,
6 and 6 in your hand than you win the game straight away. But the
Inn keeper is just as sneaky as you can be! I played 6 games on
the trot without winning one round and I was getting scores like
15 and 16! (max of 17 without winning the game).

The only thing that I could find wrong with the game was the text
font. It is in a gothic font and when it is enlarged for the intro
it can become unreadable at times. The 'C's look like 'R's and the
'T's just take ages to decipher. But overall the game is
excellent, the graphics are good and the games plot has been well
thought out. I would give it 8/10.

















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