Images taken from CPC Oxygen
The Balrog is still trying to recover from a rather freaky birthday party
(never invite a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle) but he still manages to bring
you the latest news and reviews from the lands of Adventure...
---------------------------------------------------------------------
News
Watch out 007!
Topologika have announced that they will be releasing a new adventure
title in the Autumn. This will be the long-promised Spysnatcher by Jon Thackray
and Jonathon Partington, price around £14.95 including VAT and available for
both CPC and PCW (disc only). The theme is obviously inspired by Peter Wright's
book Spy Catcher - review will appear as soon as it is released! For further
details ring/fax Brian Kerslake on 0733 244682.
Recreation Re-creation
Is the name of a new company created by Mark Eltringham to market some
of the many games that are being released at the moment. Mark has four games
to start with and is hoping to expand this list soon. The games are:-Al-Strad:
A re-release from way back in 1985, and, according to Mark, this game will
become the flagship of Recreation Re-creation - it's meant to be that good.
£2.50 tape, £4.50 disc.
Tealand: The plot of Tealand is that you must buy a smurf an ice-cream (!?)
- weird! £2 tape, £4 disc.
Castle Warlock: An interesting one this, and one the Balg is keen to see.
Castle Warlock was the first game ever written by Ken Bond HBalg (yes, even
older than the Island!) so (hopefully!) it should be good!
Project X - Microman: Is an old commercial release last seen on the Global
compilation Fourmost Adventures. You play the part of a professor who has
been shrunk down to a fraction of his normal size and your quest is to somehow
find a way to return to normal. The game blurb says '...enjoy his battles
against a giant mole, a swarm of angry wasps, a
nd, whilst playing, try and imagine what it must be like being his size (or
even smaller like Paul Daniels)...' - I just hope a certain famous magician's
lawyers don't see that! £2.25 tape, £4.25 disc.
For more details write to Mark at 39 Gargle Hill, Thorpe St. Andrew, Norwich,
Norfolk NRT OXX.
Spellbreaker spellbroken?
Spellbreaker, sister magazine to Adventure Probe will no longer be published
after July due to work pressures on the editor, Mike Brailsford. Spellbreaker
was a great little magazine who's sole aim was to print clues, maps and solutions
as well as the odd interesting article and it will be sadly missed. Mike will,
however, still be providing a back issue service so, if you'd like to see
what you've missed, write to him at 19 Napier Place, South Parks, Glenrothes,
Fife KY6 1DX.
Tower of Light extinguished...
In AA54 the Balg reported on a new role playing
game from CRL called Tower of Light. Unfortunately since then CRL has disbanded
and it looks like the Tower of Light will never shine on the Amstrad...
Graphical PAW
Those nice people at Gilsoft have decided to offer the Professional Adventure
Writer and Graphics package (reviewed this issue) at a bargain price of £19.95
for Balrog readers - that's £8 cheaper than the RRP. The review in AA28 said
'...PAW is flexible enough to suit the most ambitious writer. An excellent
product, well documented and well worth buying!...'. If you want an example
of what the PAW can do then look no further than Ken Bond's games The Island, The Base, The Test and
The Spiro Legacy. Don't forget that PAW is disc only!
************************************************
Please send me copy/ies of the * * Professional Adventure Writer with
Graphics *
* at £19.95 per copy. *
* *
* Name: *
* *
* Address: *
* *
* *
* *
* *
* *
* Send the coupon to: *
* *
* GILSOFT, 2 Park Crescent, Barry, *
* South Glamorgan CF6 8HD *
* *
* AA69 *
***********************************************
Oops!
Last issue the Balrog reviewed a game written by Bob Adams called
'Knapped'... except it wasn't! For some reason 'Grue' was missed off - the
games real name is 'Grue Knapped' - Sorry Bob!
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Reviews
The Spiro Legacy
Ken Bond, 17 Adel Park Gardens, Adel, Leeds, West Yorkshire LS16 8BN. Tel:
(0532) 672278.
Available for CPC & PCW.
£4.50 disc only.
The Spiro Legacy is the latest game PAWed by that master writer of adventures,
Ken Bond. As with all of Ken's games, The Spiro Legacy is disc and text only
with atmospheric text and strong puzzles.
The start of The Spiro Legacy starts innocently enough. You are sitting in the
dining room of your small mews cottage listening to the Today program on the
radio when a large package arrives in the post. Inside the package is an old
fashioned door key, and two letters, one from some solicitors in London and the
other from your deceased Uncle Spiro. Now things start getting interesting...
The letter from the solicitor informs you of the reading of the will - it seems
your Uncle died in mysterious circumstances but he left almost all his estate
to you. This sounds great until you read your Uncle's letter... You see Uncle
Spiro was a famous magician, who had appeared on TV and done many stage shows,
but Spiro's letter reveals his secret - his tricks were so fantastic and
unexplicable as he used real magic. Spiro's greatest friend was Sir Richard
Maltravers whose castle adjoins your Uncle's to the north. The letter explains
how Sir Richard shared Spiro's passion for magic but succumbed to the dark,
evil side. Your Uncle expresses a fear of Sir Richard and asks for you to enter
Maltravers castle and exorcise him. He warns you that this will not be easy -
Richard will have set many magic traps but your Uncle writes thathe has hidden
spells (hidden so that Maltravers cannot discover them) which you can use on
his own estate. This is your Uncle Spiro's Legacy.
The game comes in two parts - the first being set in your house and Abbeyville
(your Uncle's estate) whilst the second is set in the grounds and interior of
Sir Richard's castle. Your Uncle certainly was rich - his house is a real
mansion with servants quarters, ballroom, library and music room - quite
different to your small cottage! He even had his own 6128 and printer
(obviously he had taste!)
The game is a sort of mixture of other games' plot lines - you've got the magic
system from the Infocom Enchanter series and the horror from Price of Magic. In
fact a lot of comparisons could be made with these games - both have a magic
system and involve a rogue magician. However it would be unfair to make direct
comparisons - PAW is not really up to the standard of Level 9's or Infocom's
in-house system! (Although I still believe it is the best commercially
available on the CPC).
As mentioned in your Uncle's letter, Spiro has hidden various (useful) spells
around his house. These spells are very well hidden - on computer disc, encased
in honey and elsewhere - the spells have some strange names as well, all, for
some reason, ending in the letter O! Hence, you have VIMTO, BISTO and FLYMO
amongst others! To use a spell you mu
st 'CAST FLYMO SPELL ON ME' - the Balg initially had trouble with this as I
forgot to include the word SPELL but once this was overcome everything went
well.
Part two has you wandering around Sir Richard's castle, avoiding the various
traps he has set to catch you whilst you are trying to find and exorcise him.
There are two mazes to solve and various other magical and non-magical puzzles
to heed or halt you.
Ken has increased the level of interaction and made it even better than before
- not only can you examine, look in, look under and look behind, you can now
feel in spaces that are dark. So, you could feel up the inside of a chimney or
feel behind a seat. As with most PAW games you can also ramsave and ramload (or
RS and RL for short) and it will understand sentences such as 'fill the bucket
with water then place it on the platform' or 'drop everything except the copy
of Amstrad Action'. However I did find a couple of problems with the parser
especially with regard to character interaction - in part two you have to talk
to an old crone and ask her various questions... Unfortunately the program is a
bit choosy about the inputs it accepts - you must type 'ASK CRONE "ABOUT
XXXX"'
Once again Ken has written another brilliant adventure - great puzzles, good
parser and verbose descriptions - Another worthy addition to any adventurer's
collection.
Atmosphere 82%
//////////////////////////////////////////////////
Interaction 70%
/ SCREEN /
Challenge 85%
/ SHOT /
Overall 89%
//////////////////////////////////////////////////
**********************************************************************
{
Put this in some sort of scroll??
}
Honorary Balrog
The awarding of the title Honorary Balrog is a rare and prestigious honour -
it is only given to those Amstrad adventurers who have really excelled
themselves in their efforts. The title of Lord/Lady of adventure is not a
prestigious enough title any more as anyone can join. Those awarded the title
are allowed to put the letters 'HBalg' after their name.
The Balrog has the pleasure of awarding an Honorary Balrog award to Ken Bond
for his work in the field of adventure writing. Ken has just finished his
fourth fantastic game (reviewed above) and has again shown what the PAW is
capable of. Well done Ken Bond HBalg!
Suggestions for Honorary Balrogs are welcome: Who do you think deserves such an accolade? Write to HBalg Nominations, The Balrog, Amstrad Action, Future Publishing Ltd, Beaufort Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, Avon BA1 2AP.
**********************************************************************
PAW Graphics disc
£6.49 - You must send your original PAW disc (but not the packaging!) to be
modified.
Gilsoft, 2 Park Crescent, Barry, South Glamorgan CF6 8HD.
The Professional Adventure Writer is probably the best commercially available
adventure creator system around but was restricted as you could only create
your games on disc and they had to be text only... Until now. Those Welsh
Wizards of Adventure at Gilsoft have written a package that allows you to add
graphics to your PAW games. All you have to do to get the program is send
Gilsoft your PAW disc along with £6.49 and they'll return it with the added
files and demo.
You can add graphics to any PAWed game which has 2.5K or more free memory (so
the software patch has room to be added). Graphics are loaded off disc a la
Magnetic Scrolls or ADLAN so that you can still use nearly all the memory for
writing the adventure proper. The graphic window can be anything from two lines
deep to twenty (to give you an idea GAC's graphic screen is 17 lines deep).
Unlike GAC though, the graphics must be drawn using an art package such as
Advanced Art Studio (if you can't afford to buy an art package you could use
one of the AA type-in ones) - you could even use Gilsoft's 'Illustrator'
package. Graphics and text are displayed in the Amstrads 4 colour, 40 column
mode 1.
Unfortunately this is the only mode possible and there is not a split mode - it
would have been better to have been mode 1 or 0 at the top of the screen for
graphics and mode 2 at the bottom for text but obviously this would use up a
lot of memory.
The package is easy to use - you just draw the pictures, write a small text
file (simple to do as the manual is very helpful) and then use two CPM programs
to first convert the art files to PAW format and then to add the graphics patch
to the executable game (The .COM file). As the second program works on the
executable adventure then in theory you could add graphics to other people's
PAW games as well! (Although I don't think they would be very pleased with you
if you did!) Although the above all seems great, the package does have some
major flaws. Graphics files on the disc are not compressed - a 12 line picture
takes up 8K whereas a 17 line graphic uses 11K - when you only have 169K per side
of a disc. Granted, you could use both sides disc but still you can't have any
more than 25 graphics when you take into consideration the adventure itself
takes up about 40K. 'What's wrong with that?' I hear you ask - surely you don't
need to have a graphic in every location? Of course you don't, but, and this is
a big but, if there is no graphic for a certain location then the graphic
window is just left blank and no text flows into it. So, unlike GAC, when there
is no graphic you have the top half of the screen completely blank and the 40
column text still kept in a little window at the bottom of the monitor - not a
very satisfactory answer. Now, if you think of the average PAW game having 70
locations - that's a lot of locations without graphics and hence looking messy
unless you have a lot of repetition. If only the graphics files were somehow
compressed so that more could be put on a disc, then this would be avoided.
There are a couple of other minor complaints - you cannot turn the graphics off
in a game and you need different graphics for the PCW and CPC versions of a
game. However these problems aren't really that important when compared to the
amount of disc space used by graphics and the restricted text window.
PAW Art is a great idea and good value for money but it is a shame that more
thought was not put into writing the package - compressing the graphics and
allowing text to scroll into the graphic window would make the package a lot
more recommendable.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Clue Sniffing with the Balrog
Have you noticed the Cluepot is looking a bit bare this issue? That's
because the Balg is running out of clues! So crank up your clue factories and
send your hints and tips to Clue Sniffing with The Balrog, Amstrad Action,
Future Publishing Ltd, Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, AVON BA1 2AP.
This month's selection of clues is brought to you thanks to:
Howard Swaines, Ian Howlett, Simon "Aragorn" Netherwood and Hazis
Dolgizas - all true adventurers.
The Big Sleaze - Part 3
Drive to Chinatown
Ask Wang to open his shop door.
Follow killer into bar and shoot.
Drive to battery park to find Statue of Liberty.
Examine dog bowl in Brooklyn Heights.
Boggit
The sword is in the cauldron.
Give Lard the duty-free and the key.
Corruption
During the interview try to talk about the powder and not about insider
dealing.
FINAL ADVICE: You could find some interesting things in the PHARMACY simply be
EXAMINing the SHELVES. There's a concert going on from 2:00 to 3:30 on the
paved area. If some of the coded hints don't work try entering them without
spaces... Try to do as much READing as possible. You get many extra points.
There's some cutlery on the alcove table.
Moonmist
Have a bath and wear the dinner outfit.
The treasures are:
Red version: War Club - clean the cane in umbrella stand (foyer)
Blue version: Skull in the bell (fighting deck)
Green version: Moonmist drug in the inkwell (office)
Yellow version: Black pearl necklace on skeleton (secret crypt) Get the aerosol
can from Bolitho. Use it when you meet the ghost. Ask Tamara and Bolitho about
the ghost.
Mrs Julia Constable has come to Michael Hill's aid in Seabase Delta -
You must use the correct words, TAKE card from dead man's body, ENTER CAR,
FASTEN seat-belt and INSERT card in slot. The car will then go to another
station - then UNFASTEN seat-belt and LEAVE car. You do this at each station
until the card needs renewing at the Head Office.
Claire Davies has answered Michael Hill pleas for help in Grange Hill: To get
the matches; take the paper plane and throw the plane at the matches to knock
them off the wall. Keep them, they'll come in handy!
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Help!
Help! I need somebody! Help! Not just anybody! Help! You know I need
someone... to help me with this adventure problem!
Kay Wheeler (the rarely mentioned partner in the dynamic Wheeler adventure
duo!) is having problems with the native in the Secret of Ur. Can anyone help?
Arkham Manor is causing problems for Jon Bingham and Simon Netherwood even with
the help of Thomas Christie's map printed in AA66:-1.
How do you get in the manor?
2. What do you do with the bottle, gun, cross, needle, chalk and rusty key?
3. How do you use the gunpowder safely and where?
4. What useful telegrams are there?
Steven Kenny is stuck at the start of Life Term - how do you use the DCS
Device?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Lords & Ladies of Adventure
Six new Lords and Ladies join us this month all raring to help you with your adventure problems. Don't forget when writing to a Lord or Lady to send a self stamped addressed envelope and keep phone calls within sociable hours or else!...
Aftershock, Football Frenzy, Gnome Ranger, Kentilla, Knight Tyme, Mega
Bucks, Rigel's Revenge & Seabase Delta.
Jon Bingham, 10 Cowslip Walk, Amblecote, Brierley Hill, West Midlands DY5 2QN.
Fantasia Diamond, Fish, Future Wars & Guild of Thieves.
Bilbo Baggins, 67 Philip Avenue, Nuthall, Nottingham NG16 1EB.
Grange Hill, Great Escape & Knightmare.
Thomas Storey, 27 Queens Drive, Whitley Bay, Tyne & Wear NE26 2JU.
Star Wreck.
Steven Kenny. Tel (0942) 213195.
Star Wreck.
James Morley, 27 Rowlestone Rise, Greengates, Bradford, West Yorkshire BD10
ODS. Tel: (0274) 616674
Hollywood Hijinx & Scapeghost.
Gwynn Hopkins, Albion House, Llandre, Nr. Aberystwyth, Dyfed SY24 5BS.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Contacting the Balg
The Balg is desperate for new contributions to the Cluepot and Just for Laughs sections - to get in contact with him, write to The Balrog, Amstrad Action, Future Publishing Ltd, Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, AVON BA1 2AP or balrog@uk.ac.ed.cs.tardis if you have E-mail.