It's time for another BBC Micro text adventure game. This one is short and fun like the others I've played before, but this one is a bit rough around the edges control-wise, and I wish that part was polished a little more.
This game is also available on the Amstrad CPC464 and plays the same despite being in color.
On a visit to the Palace of Craal, you find the place in uproar. The King is dead and his crown stolen by a wicked wizard who's fled to his den in the palace dungeons. By paying rather too much attention to the ex-king's daughter, you find yourself volunteered to recover it. You are thrown into the dungeons and told not to come back without the crown. Here begins the adventure...
To look around the current location, press L and press Return. N, S, E and W go north, south, east and west, respectively. I gives you your inventory. Typing any of the other twenty letters in the alphabet gives you commands you can type in.
Commands will be in all caps.
You'll start out in the Armoury. There is a vending machine here that you cannot use yet. S. You'll be in an old dirty chamber. TAKE CURTAIN. E. You'll be in a hermit's cell where a fire burns brilliantly in a corner. Without this fire, the room will be dark. E. An irate dwarf will get irritated at you for lighting up the room and throw his lamp at you, breaking it as soon as it lands in the previous room. You won't be able to interact with this troll at all, and the troll keeps you from going north. W. TAKE LAMP. W. N. You'll be back at the armoury.
N. You will be in a cavern with a large pool of water. E. You'll be in a tight east-west tunnel, and inside the tunnel is a dry, blank parchment. TAKE PARCHMENT. E. You'll be in Ebeneezer's Enterprises, where a troll with a business-like air will be. Just like the troll we met earlier, we cannot interact directly with this shopkeeper. At this point, some people will get stuck.
W. W. DROP PARCHMENT. You will drop the parchment in the water, and the parchment will change. L. You'll find out the parchment is now a voucher for a free lamp in exchange for a broken one. TAKE VOUCHER. E. E. You'll be back at Ebeneezer's Enterprises. DROP VOUCHER. DROP LAMP. You'll get a brand new lamp. Don't worry about taking it; it will automatically be in your inventory, and the game will tell you if you try (at least the game does this).
W. W. DROP CURTAIN at the cavern with the pool of water. The curtain will get wet. S. S. E. DROP LAMP at the hermit's cell. This lights the lamp. DROP CURTAIN. The curtain will burn away and reveal a coin. TAKE COIN. You'll want to do all these steps in this order. If you drop the wet curtain before lighting the new lamp, the troll in the next room comes in under the cover of complete darkness and kills you. (I did not know this until I tried to record the longplay.) If you drop the curtain into the fire without getting it wet first, it will catch on fire completely and kill you. TAKE COIN. TAKE LAMP if you want to.
W. N. DROP COIN. A sword will come out of the vending machine; you'll automatically take it. HIT VENDING MACHINE. (If you don't have the sword, the game tells you to get one first.) You'll break the vending machine and find the coin again. TAKE COIN.
S. E. E. HIT TROLL. If you have the sword, you'll kill the troll; if you don't, the game tells you to get a sword first. After killing the troll, you can go north. N. You'll enter the final room, with a mirror that has this engravement: "Say mirror word to wizard meet, Be sure you have the gold to greet." SAY HELLO OLLEH. You'll teleport into the wizard's room. If you have the coin, the wizard uses the coin to buy a pint and gives you the crown, making you king and winning the game. If you don't have the coin, the wizard kills you. Either way, you don't battle the wizard. Weird. But hey, having the coin wins the game.
The game isn't bad, but I have some complaints with the game. Unless you've played other text adventures from this period, you'll have no idea that all the commands for this game are done in shorthand, as the game expects you to know shorthand text adventure commands. Also, the room descriptions give you no idea of where you can go, forcing you to make a map of this game. When you pick up an item, the game does not tell you that you have, and you'll be forced to look at the room again to check your inventory just to make sure you picked it up. Also, to use items, you have to drop them, as the game recognizes no other commands. A few of the puzzles, such as the curtain and teleporting into the wizard's room can be a bit out there for some players. You can't even interact with either of the trolls in this game or the wizard directly. No grunts from the troll? No enterprise troll welcoming us to his shop and asking how he can help us? No brief wizard battle where you somehow get to kill him with the sword? C'mon. I was expecting at least that last one. Despite all these gripes, this is an alright text adventure, even if it is a bit short in actuality, but at the same time, I wish the execution was better control-wise.
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