THE WEDDING Part of disk 1027 A text adventure by Neil Brown Review by Bev Truter Before getting down to the real nitty-gritty of reviewing WEDDING, I'll begin by mentioning that the current release number is 4. I had an old release number 2, but I hastily downloaded the #4 before playing, as a major new puzzle was added for release 3 and onwards. Geographically speaking, WEDDING looks a very short game containing only 27 locations - 7 in the garden of an old manor house, and 20 inside the manor. However this is very misleading, as the game soon becomes very intricate and involved, full of puzzles to solve, problems to overcome, and a colourful array of characters (9 people, 1 dog) to meet and interact with. WEDDING is not so much a detective story, but more a ripping mystery yarn. There are no bodies or murder involved, and all you have to do to win the game is ensure that your best friend's wedding goes ahead as planned. WEDDING is beautifully written, well-planned and flawlessly programmed. This being release 4, I assume that any bugs that existed previously have been thoroughly disposed of by now. The gist of the plot is that some time ago you received an invitation to the wedding of your ex-flatmate and old college chum Malcolm, to a Miss Deborah D'Arcy. On the morning of the wedding day you received an anonymous phone call from an agitated female, asking you to come over to the D'Arcy Manor immediately, to try and sort out a terrible mess. You took off down the motorway, and arrived at the imposing entrance to D'Arcy Manor, only to find an unobliging security guard at the front door. He refuses to let you in, claiming your name is not down on the guest list. This, then is your first problem in WEDDING - how to get past the guard, and find out what is going on inside the manor. What exactly IS this "mess" you've been called in to sort out? And who made the phone call to you? Once you have found a way into the manor you still have to be careful that the security guard doesn't find you - he will doggedly search for you until the alarm stops ringing. All the characters in WEDDING are relatives of Deborah, with the exception of your friend Malcolm, and Scamp the dog. You will have to talk to everyone, find out what their interests are, perhaps discover some peculiarities of behaviour, and most of them will help you in some way if you can oblige them or get their attention. Malcolm appears to be missing from the gathering, so one of your first tasks is to discover where he is. And then there's Deborah, shut away in her bedroom reading a magazine, convinced that the wedding is off. There are some lovely puzzles to solve during the course of unravelling the central mystery of WEDDING, and you'll have to find out exactly what has happened, and why, before you reach the ultimate goal of ensuring that the wedding takes place. In WEDDING there are several problems involving a telephone, a VCR, a camera, a TV and a remote control device. Although many people enjoy fiddling about with bits and pieces of equipment like these in text adventures, I usually don't. But in WEDDING the puzzles are so good that I happily fiddled and fidgeted with the TV, VCR, etc. for hours, as all the "equipment" puzzles have been so well- constructed. The game has a built-in hint system, where you can access a menu of pop-up hints that apply to the section of the game where you are currently stuck. Most of the hints are very vague indeed, giving you only the slightest nudge in the right direction. When you have finished the game you can access a separate menu that tells you more about the plot of WEDDING, and gives further details about the various characters in the game. WEDDING grabbed my attention right from the beginning, and I was soon immersed in the mystery of the missing bridegroom and fascinated by Deborah's eccentric relatives. This is a quite difficult but intriguing game to play, and I liked it, very much. - o -