Fantasy adventuring fun
Scott Adams is known in the business for his copious amounts of text and graphics adventures, including the Questprobe series, Voodoo Castle and Savage Island. This is another which follows closely to his established formula and which bears many of the hallmarks which characterize his work, including occasionally baffling puzzles and a slightly twisted sense of humour. This one finds the player taking on the role of a wizard's apprentice and who must embark on a deadly quest on his master's behalf. The wizard has rather foolishly lost the 13 Stars of Power so it falls to his apprentice to venture into spooky old Claymorgue Castle in order to retrieve them, presumably because something terrible will happen if he doesn't. Gameplay follows the traditions of the genre, with the player entering text-based commands into the parser system while the castle and its surroundings are portrayed via still images. This one differs slightly due to the magic system which allows you to cast spells to aid you in the solving of the copious amounts of puzzles you will encounter and which makes for an interesting addition to proceedings. This is far from a classic adventure and newcomers might be better off with something like Guild of Thieves or Zork, but it remains decent enough in its own right. The plot is a familiar one but the setting is brought to life well through evocative descriptions and nicely atmospheric images. The puzzles can occasionally be frustrating as it is not always clear what you're supposed to do, while limitations with the parser mean that sometimes you might be doing the right thing, just not in the exact way the game demands. Despite this however, there is a fun and pretty challenging game to enjoy here so if you do like this type of thing, you'll probably have a good time here.
