First instalment in a great series of text adventures
This is the first in a trilogy of old-school text adventures that continues with Return to Doom and Last Days of Doom, and for fans of interactive fiction like Zork and The Tracer Sanction, this is a great piece of entertainment. The story is a sci-fi one, which tells the tale of a lone space pilot who crash-lands on the inhospitable planet of Doom and who must survive terrible odds if he is to survive. The main goal of the game is to collect the various parts of your ship in order to escape but in a nice twist that adds a lot of tension to the game, you only have limited time in which to achieve this. This being a text-adventure, there are of course no graphics on display here so anyone looking for flashy visuals should steer clear. However, like other games from the same developer, including Acheton and Kingdom of Hamil, the game world is brought vividly to life through excellently written descriptions of your surroundings and which make your adventure through this harsh land a compelling and exciting one. Characters and situations are well described and believable and while the story is simple enough, there are many great moments along the way. The interface and parser system are to the high standards of Infocom's many similar adventures, which makes this one easy to pick up for newcomers to the genre and veterans alike. The puzzles on display here are also of a high standard and which are challenging but thanks to their generally logical nature, are rarely frustrating. The whole Doom trilogy comes highly recommended whether you have played this kind of thing before or just don't know where to start and by starting with this one, you will get the most out of the series, so do yourself a favour and check it out.
