REAL
mixed bag this month: one Quilled, one from the GAC, one from yesteryear, one
icon-driven, and one bookware, how’s that for variety! The Quilled game is from a small independent named
Mystic, who have tried to take the Quill format and
put some new life into it. Imagination, the Graphic Adventure
Creator game from Peter Torrence, looks a little dry (like all GAC games), but
its playing around four different themes is novel. The blast from the past is
8th Day’s Four Minutes to Midnight. Inspired by a Stephen King novel, it has
now been re-released and served up with graphics and many new commands.
Using icons can be a blessing or a bugbear when it comes to adventuring, and in the case of Anco’s The Kingdom of Krell I’m not altogether convinced the icons make the going easier. The game does look good, however, filling 128K of memory, and deserves praise for stepping up to 128 if nothing else. The bookware program is, as you might have guessed, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, a Level 9/Mosaic/Virgin affair which I particularly enjoyed playing. The software follows the book (by Sue Townsend) and the TV series very closely, yet in my opinion the program has been constructed in a way which creates sufficient options to justify the addition of the computer game to the Mole phenomenon.
There was another arrival this month which was most welcome — a fanzine (The Adventurers Handbook) which had metamorphised into a full-blown, professionally bound and typed adventure booklet. What impressed me about What Now? is its thorough usefulness to people like myself (or anyone else who tends to have a crack at a lot of adventures). I think the authors of the booklet must be congratulated for upping the gloss, and still finding the time to keep up the standard. The contents page, which gives some insight into the multitude of maps, solutions, and articles on offer, is followed by a curt but informative news page. Reader’s letters complete what is a very full and worthwhile publication The cost is £1.50, H&D are the publisher. With standards as high as theirs keep an eye open for What Now? in your local computer shop.