I haven't played many Spectrum games and thought it was high time I tried a few so I read a few reviews and plumped for this game as it seemed to suit my tastes; long and old-fashioned.
It turned out to be a bit of a curate's egg - the author Andrew Bogue had some good ideas for puzzles and wove a traditional treasure hunt in with an Odyssey to return to your village through the eponymous Forest but the whole thing feel messy and disjointed. There are endless descriptions of grassy trails and more grassy trails. The low inventory limit means that you have to jettison some objects as you travel on and there are a number of teleported areas, some useful and some not. There are a number of fairly small mazes which can be mapped in the traditional way which I have always liked (I know, I know, the maze club has very few members!)
Some of the puzzles are rather good, in particular one involving an area of tall grass where two foes are after you and you have to manoeuvre them so they meet and kill each other and not you. I had flashbacks to the two black spheres on the spiral ramp in Dungeon Adventure there.
There are several red herrings (and a real one that is useful) and over 180 locations to reconnoitre so you won't finish this in a couple of days.
The vocabulary covers most of the things you'll try. I was pleased to see that the majority of meta objects can also be referred to.
The descriptions are mainly functionally staccato but the author has done his best to evoke a steamy, dark jungle within the limited confines of Quill.
Fuse occasionally crashed me out, most of the time when I was attempting to parse DROP and the cursor would take off on an existential home run and fill the line with P's then lock up.
Some unusual verbs such as APPLAUD and SCRATCH are implemented.
Once you get into the game there is quite a nice feeling of immersion. The author cleverly (and sparingly) adds nice touches like the occasional rumble of thunder and a rustle in the trees above your head. The action was mercifully free of David Attenborough and his on expenses film crew (Spike Milligan was right).
There are several unclued deaths (if you can call climbing an ancient tree and dying unclued) but what can you expect traversing a dangerous jungle on your tod?
There is unusually no light source needed nor any hunger or thirst demons which was refreshing.
The main bugbear is ferrying items north or south of the river. After a first experimentation where you can swim over with four items you subsequently seem to drown even if you are not carrying anything but the treasures (which you can't put down anyway). Planning is needed to keep items on the right side of the river where they will be used.
The best part of the game. While there are not too many of them, those there are stand up quite well as stimulating entertainment. The problem with the yellow dragon I had to look up as I still don't understand the answer even now.
The others are not too difficult provided you remember to examine absolutely everything; one missed perusal can be the difference between success and frustration.
I think six is fair. A nice long puzzley game with two goals that suffers from a messy implementation and too many teleports.