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The game loads up with some pleasant music as the plot
scrolls smoothly up the page. You then find yourself
on the shore of Treasure Island, where you have arrived
with Long John Silver to find a fortune before it's
snaffled by rival pirate Tom Morgan.
The
display consists of a large graphics window showing
the landscape visible in the direction which you are
facing. This direction is indicated by a compass icon
situated at the bottom right, though you can only use
this feature if you are carrying a compass in your inventory.
As in Lords of Midnight, you can look in eight
directions and the display updates accordingly.
Entering
either WALK, RUN or SEARCH then moves you 88, 350 or
22 yards respectively in the direction you are facing.
Trees and other landscape features change according
to scale as you move towards them. The effect isn't
nearly as polished as, say, the famous Lords of Midnight,
but for £1.99 it's pretty impressive. My only other
gripe is that it takes far too long to update the graphics.
There's
a reasonable vocabulary -- not large, but sufficiently
useful to make the game interesting. It includes some
unusual commands; COOK, for example and SLEEP (which
speeds up the clock display and hastens the arrival
of night, when the display is dramatically darkened).
There's also TELESCOPE. This is an excellent feature
which gives you a cursor on the screen. Move it left
or right and then press SPACE, and lo and behold you
get a magnified display of the area under the cursor
in a circular window. Neat. Also occasionally useful,
because the display gets rather indistinct in the distance
and you can lose your bearings.
[This screenshot was not in the original
review]
Other
novel ideas include the provision of flags, which you
can drop as you move around the island and which then
give you a landmark to navigate from. This is essential
if you haven't got the compass for some reason.
For
£1.99 this is ripe for the pickings, Wizardlings. Lots
of exploring, and if there's a slight dearth of action
it's only because the map is so great that you couldn't
really have a circus in every spot. It's very heartening
to see a budget game using an original programming idea
for an adventure rather than another GAC or Quill
release -- well done to the programmers Phase Two Software,
whoever they may be.
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