Tower Of Barad, written using PAW in 2005 has the feel of a much older game, and isn't one I would normally have played as I don't like text adventures with graphics. However, what is good enough for Phoenix veteran Richard Bos is good enough for me so I fired it up, after first finding out how to change the Fuse emulator to run 128K games. At first sight I wasn't impressed and nearly pulled the metaphorical plug but I carried on as some of the descriptions at least were intriguing and the graphics, which only appear about every eight locations or so are quickly drawn. At the moment I am trying to rescue Dingo Doggit from the ramshackle hut of a troll at the end of a council estate alleyway. At least it is original.
To be fair to the author he has thought up some innovative puzzles where objects are used in ways far removed from their perceived raisons d'ĂȘtre. The skein of rather English jokiness works quite well too; I particularly like Farmer Piles and his strong in t'arm and thick in t'head son Jethro.
The main problems revolve around the parser (too often there is only one phrase that will work and it is seldom the first, or indeed the third, one that I would have used) and the lack of conditional statements. The balrog becomes a dead balrog and is thus described in the game, but cannot be referred to as the object no longer exists for interaction. Likewise the rickety bridge is always referred to as a rope bridge, a bridge that I haven't even found yet and the bottle of weedkiller as mentioned is parsed as a bottle of gin which I also haven't found. These problems aren't game breaking, at least not yet, but they do make gameplay more frustrating than it need have been. TAKE ALL sometimes parses a blank carriage return and sometimes not. The jury is still out but at the least the black cap has not been donned by the judge so far.
A far from obvious verb list has led to some epic battles with the parser but I have usually won out in the end.
A certain amount of wackiness (a council estate is next to a forest) but the descriptions are quite long and there are very few if any typos or grammatical wonks.
It is easy to give an item and soft lock or inadvertently stand on a land mine without prior warning. Such is the fate of trespassers and text adventure heroes.
Rather varied and clever.
Definitely worth a punt provided you have a fair amount of patience.