FEAR
         An Inform text adventure by Chuan-Tze Teo
                     Part of Disk 1075

                   Reviewed by Bev Truter

Oh, how I enjoy a well-written game, and FEAR certainly qualifies
for that description. I think this game was one of the entries in
the 1996 I-F competition on the Internet, but I'm not sure.
Anyhow, FEAR is another cleverly constructed adventure, with many
novel puzzles and intriguing objects to deal with. One of the
reasons I'm not sure about it being a 1996 competition entry is
that it has 45 locations, about 40 locations longer than the
average competition entry. There is an in-built hint system for
the truly baffled or chronically impatient, and the total score
possible is 36/36 points.

FEAR begins in your bedroom, and it's clear that there is
something drastically wrong with your little world and/or state of
mind. Your house seems incredibly shabby and in need of attention,
you can't quite remember recent events, and you are plagued by
numerous fears - fear of the dark, fear of heights, fear of
unfamiliar sounds, and to top it all, arachnophobia. All in all
you're a quivering wreck, and unless you begin sorting out your
life, "they" will arrive at your front door to "take you
away"....or so you believe. It's clear from a box of tablets in
your bedroom that you have been taking some sort of trial drug,
but you can't really remember why, or when last you took one of
the pills. You do have brief flashes of unpleasant memories -
something about a bomb, explosions, someone getting killed - but
in your befuddled state nothing makes sense.

You will soon discover that you need your front door keys, and
that you dropped your keyring in the attic. So the aim-of-the-game
in FEAR is to climb the ladder that leads into the attic to
retrieve your lost keyring. Although this sounds a perfectly
simple thing to do, in your fearful state of mind it poses an
insurmountable problem. In order to enter the attic you will first
have to overcome all your assorted fears; and the only way to
accomplish this is to enter a series of three different "dream
worlds", each with its own set of particular puzzles to solve. You
drift off in a sort of daydream into these 3 worlds by examining a
book, a photo and a crystal bowl; and you will also have to deal
with that very real spider dangling down from the lintel above
your kitchen door.

I liked the photo/fear of heights section best of all. The puzzles
here were difficult, but logical; and there's a real sense of
achievement when you retrieve a rather incongruous object from its
resting-place up in the rafters of the Great Hall in Cambridge.

Another dream sequence deals with your fear of the dark, and
involves pushing a series of objects about from one location to
another - a bit like that awful Royal Maze puzzle in Zork 3, only
this one is smaller and more comprehensible. (I never managed to
grasp the logic behind that Zork 3 puzzle, even after going
through the solution about 20 times, accompanied by feverish
scribblings on tatty bits of paper.) In the third dream world you
tackle your fear of strange sounds, and this involves a
listening/musical puzzle. I found this puzzle the hardest, but
then apart from being tone-deaf I possess the musical appreciation
of your average earthworm - no; probably less. The locations in
this section were terrific, simply dripping with atmosphere,
imagination and symbolism.

After successfully dealing with your fear in each dream sequence
you are whisked back to your living room, each time that bit
closer to climbing the ladder that leads up to your attic. There's
a wonderful sense of achievement in this game when you finally
manage to get that elusive keyring, but don't bask for too long in
that smug glow of satisfaction because you soon hear the wail of
sirens, and "they" still come to pound on your front door...

FEAR has a clever plot, a flair for the dramatic, and maintains
tension all the way through. I was literally sitting on the edge
of my seat through most of this game, absolutely determined to get
into that blasted attic. This is an interesting, absorbing game to
play, with loads of atmosphere.

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