Silence of the Lambs Part of Disk 1070 Reviewed by Nick Edmunds When Silence first appeared in my in-tray I was quite excited at the prospect of an interactive horror based on a film particularly after playing the excellently scary Zuni Doll (circulated with SynTax 62). The arrival of Silence also coincided neatly with my new found interest in cannibalism which had surfaced, primarily through the films "Ravenous" and "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (recently re-released) and partly through my nutritionally challenged diet (which occasionally gives me odd cravings.) At this point I was looking forward to something I could really get my teeth into . The game, and I use the term loosely, begins "Down on the farm" where the lambs are really noisy. What's to be done? "Oi leave them sheep alone!" was my initial reaction, but after the racial knee jerk response and one command later I found I'd achieved the rank of F. B. I. Agent and finished the game. Before I knew what was happening! What can I say? I ain't no genius, this just wasn't right. After a few seconds of stunned silence I restarted and tried to 'play' a bit, nope nothing: no matter what I tried I could only find the one command with any real effect. One extremely sparse location, one very simple problem and no items whatsoever. There's not even an 'about', 'info' or 'credits' section and as such it would appear that the author wishes to remain anonymous rather than accept responsibility for something which couldn't even realistically be called an 'exercise in coding'. This is without any doubt the shortest game I have ever played. It's probably the shortest game ever. In fact Silence is so short it only just qualifies as a game at all. Although with the growing trend in text adventures being a move away from the great rambling dungeons of our origins into shorter and more contemporary styled situations Silence could be seen as the peak of modern interactive fiction. As such I found Silence to be a bit of a disappointment. Yes, my disappointment was mainly due to my expectations not being fulfilled, but it's not like I ask for much. Not only was Silence not what I was hoping for, but it's also not what I would expect from a game at all. And on this occasion I don't think I would be the only one disappointed by a game whose title was almost as long as the game itself. In all fairness to Silence there are no spelling mistakes, coding faults or syntactic errors and you don't have to have seen the film to fully appreciate this game for what it is. (Neither of which were a difficult task for the author, but I try to say something nice when I can.) This, coupled with the physical size of the game, prevents the whole from coming across as too amateurish even though the author obviously didn't exert any real effort. Thus, the saving grace of Silence is that it's all over so quickly you don't have time to feel anything. Which really is much preferable to the lingering pain of some games, a few of which still haunt me to this day. This said however, Silence did give me a laugh, partly from shock and partly in admiration that someone had the cheek to attempt passing this off as a game and it's a definite must-have for anyone who likes their adventure games on the short side. - o -