THE TEMPEST A text adventure (Inform)
                    (Part of Disk 1291)

                    Review by Bev Truter

Yup. Yet another entry in the 1997 Net Competition for text games
that didn't make the top 24. This game is not only based on
Shakespeare's play, it *is* Shakespeare's play. The author
(strange, but I couldn't find his name anywhere in all the reams
of accompanying documentation) claims that if you printed all the
text in this game and read through it all, you'd have something
30% longer than Shakespeare's original version. Ye gods! This
means that the author has literally translated the entire play
into a text adventure, which must have taken a huge amount of
time, effort and dedication; but leaves one asking the
question "Why??" The author mentions in the Frontispiece (type
FRONT instead of ABOUT) that this is a "performance" of The
Tempest, more than a "game", so perhaps that answers the
question.

In this "performance" then, you play the magical will of Prospero,
i.e. Ariel; and the computer replies as the spirit Ariel, telling
you of events as Ariel witnesses them or causes them. You play (or
"act") your way through The Tempest, helping the main character
(Prospero) through the game by commanding Ariel to perform certain
actions, or sending Ariel to spy on the other characters, as Ariel
is Prospero's eyes and ears, existing to do Prospero's bidding.

Unfortunately I became irrevocably bogged down right near the
beginning of the game, unable to do anything more than flit around
between 3 locations, and get the same long speech from Ariel
repeated over and over again with each attempt to do something in
the game. I'm not sure exactly how progress can be achieved, as
apart from mentioning that as Ariel you can "make music" at some
stage in the game, there seems to be astonishingly little that you
/ Ariel *can* do. The author mentions that it's never useful to
use the commands WAIT or EXAMINE; the command FRONT only succeeds
in bringing up the Frontispiece menu again, and PLOT will offer a
recap of the plot so far - which turned out to be absolutely zilch
in my case, as I obviously had done nothing to advance the plot.

After twenty minutes of fruitless wandering between the clouds,
the sea, and the ship I was unable to do anything constructive;
and with the storm nowhere in sight to move the plot along (I knew
there had to be a storm to sink the ship, from countless
re-readings of the original Tempest way back in my girlish
schooldays) I hadn't the foggiest notion of what to try next. Each
command that is not understood by the game elicits the response
"that word, that verb, doth elude me"; and I finally came to the
conclusion it would be a lot easier, and less frustrating, to
simply sit down and read Shakespeare's original rather than
struggle through this text "performance".

As an afterthought, although I was never particularly fond of The
Tempest as a play (making Shakespeare's plays obligatory reading
material for Eng. Lit. exams at school is one sure way of ruining
them forever for many schoolkids), Greenaway's film "Prospero's
Books" was most entertaining. I feel Shakespeare would have
approved heartily of his interpretation.

Anyhow, back to this text adventure version of The Tempest, to
misquote a line from it - this game, this point thereof, doth
elude me. Unless you feel like reading large chunks of The Bard's
text on a computer monitor, with a solution to help you manoeuvre
your way through to the end, this just doesn't seem a feasible way
to enjoy either Shakespeare or a text adventure.













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