Knights and Merchants (demo)

                      Reviewed by Sue

The first time I heard about Interactive Magic's Knights and
Merchants, I thought "Yippee! More Settlers!" and looking at the
packaging it appeared to be very similar, though with larger, more
cartoon-like graphics. I think Settlers is a great game but
sometimes it can be very frustrating when I can't make any headway
against the opposition. The demo of K&M sounded a good way to see
if it would appeal to me enough to get me to part with my cash!

Once the demo is installed, you can run it in 1024 by 768 or 800
by 600 resolution. I chose the latter. The options are to build a
town, go to battle or start a multiplayer game.

The Build a Town option opens the screen with your castle in the
centre and a few serfs hanging about waiting to do your
bidding.  The instructions were non-existent so I started
clicking. There are four main icons on the left side of the screen
- options, statistics, distribution of wares and selection of
buildings.

Clicking on this final icon, I found a window where I could lay
down roads, plough a field for farming or lay out a wine field.
Below these icons are 25 boxes. At the time, two had icons, the
rest question marks because they weren't yet available. The
available ones are school house and store house. If you click one
of these, an outline of the proposed building appears, and you
simply move it to the site where you want to build and click the
mouse to fix it. This starts the serfs working. Some labourers
flatten the land to dig the foundations, then serfs bring the raw
materials for building as long as there is a road between it and
your castle where all materials are stored. Clicking on the mouse
shows what's in the castle.  (Actually K&M calls it a store house
but I couldn't help but mentally call it a castle)

As you play, more buildings are offered. Next is an inn. Clicking
on that shows what items it needs - loaves, sausages and wine
barrels. The schoolhouse, which trains serfs into other
professions, needs gold. Once you've built a quarry, you must
train a stonemason to work there. You can organise a series of
serfs to train and leave a queue of instructions while you go off
and check something else.

All your serfs need to eat so from time to time you'll see little
"knife and fork" bubbles appear over their heads as they trudge
off to the inn for wine and sausages. Other thoughts will go
through their heads such as little blocks when laborers run out of
stone for their buildings. Soldiers need to be provided with food
when you see their 'hungry' thoughts ... they don't head off to
the inn but eat in the field. If you send them off to explore, the
land will light up as they move from one area to another.

And so this part of the demo continues as more buildings are made
available. It's very entertaining watching the little people
scurry about their business.

Briefly I took a break and tried the fighting demo. This was a
disaster. Too many of them and not enough of me. My little troops
were massacred while I clicked futilely. I decided one go was
quite enough and went back to the building demo.

It's impossible to play K&M without comparing it to Settlers. I
would say that I found the building management more enjoyable
because there are more production sequences to follow. And the
animation is VERY cute!

It's a shame you can't save the demo but you can certainly get a
good feel for the game. Evidently the whole thing consists of 20
missions, each with its own objective. I don't know how much a
part fighting plays in the full game. The fact that you can't
save/load the demo means that you can't attempt a battle at what I 
would call a sensible speed, and replay if it goes wrong. So in 
the full game it could well be more manageable.

Despite these minor reservations, I would be very tempted to buy
Knights and Merchants.

                              - o -