Pirate's Peril - Review

Pirate's Peril is a Heyley Software game written by the youthful Howard Roberts for the BBC and Electron in 1986. It was the second game written for the stable after The Ultimate Prize and features a large map, a linear journey and some tough puzzles.

You play Captain Bloodbeard who has recently been caught and tossed into clink after a prolonged sea battle with the forces of law and order. Boo! You need to escape, garner a boat and crew and sail off to claim hidden booty before your big rival Captain Jake (possibly a relative of Cutthroat Jake from Captain Pugwash) gets there before you.

Firstly the negatives; for a piece of commercial software the game is riddled with typos, misspellings and several more glaring bugs. If this game really was as tested as the blurb suggests I think Mr. Roberts should have opted for a better proof reader and beta testers. There are at least 50 errors of the former type and several of the latter. Nothing actually breaks the game but they are an annoyance nevertheless. It took me an age to escape from the first location and it was only after randomly trying a commonly used default command that the game started moving forward. The solution isn't really logical and I have no qualms in telling the reader that time doesn't advance as you try things out. Think of a command which might kick start a time lapse.

Items are frequently referred to in the location descriptions long after they have been moved elsewhere and certain commands such as SET SAIL produce no response at all if used anywhere other than one specific place in the game.

The parser itself is poor and only reads the first two characters of a word, so that "pencil" can be misconstrued as "peanuts" for example. It is also possible to use some objects which you don't actually have in your inventory, so you can FIRE BOLT even if you haven't got it with you! The inventory limit is also very parsimonious, only allowing you to carry a maximum of four items. In a game as big as this (over 220 locations) this inevitably entails a lot of weary trudging back and forth to collect and drop items.

It is also possible to win the game while missing out on a large section of it (I won while scoring only 50 points out of 230) and circumvented areas involving a vampire, a sea princess and a treasure map. I only discovered them when firing up a walkthrough as I had so many unused items I thought I would check after claiming victory to see what I had missed. This should not really be possible in a correctly structured game and I suspect it was not intentional that so much of the plot should be made optional.

It is also possible to put the game into an unwinnable state in several situations, but that was a la mode in games of its time and it should be obvious to you when you have screwed up.

OK, on to the plus points. There are some very clever puzzles in here, often more developed than simply "do X with Y to obtain Z" and the geography of the game is often cleverly and realistically linked together.

Objects are found where you might expect to find them, not incongruously placed anywhere. There is nothing more annoying to me than finding say a jungle vine found in an igloo for example, and Mr. Roberts has avoided such glaring anomalies.

There are several NPCs in the game that you will need to interact with; your skills as a forger will hopefully come to the fore (if not the aft) as well.

The separate sections of the game also merge together very well, and my map hung together believably by the finish.

There is also a nice sense of humour pervading the game, including a reference to a certain mid eighties pop group from Hull and several excruciatingly funny puns. And do try examining the sleeping pills.

The game is mercifully free of lamp, hunger, thirst and sleep daemons so the adventurer can explore at his or her leisure.

There are two mazes which are of course de rigueur for games of this venerable nature; one easily navigable via a subtle clue and the other requiring you to find a certain object which I missed first time around.

All in all a nice piece of nostalgia, and some neuralgia for those who like large old school games and who don't mind having to draw maps and die manifold times.

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Parser/Vocabulary (Rating: 5/10)

The parser only understands the first two letters of a word; this led to some ambiguity and confusion. Many of the items in the rooms cannot be interacted with, only the ones at the end of the description. More synonyms could have been included.

Atmosphere (Rating: 7/10)

The author has nicely evoked the map. Given the 32 kb memory constraints it was created under the descriptions are just the right length.

Cruelty (Rating: Tough)

It is possible to put the game in an unwinnable state very easily. No daemons which is a bonus.

Puzzles (Rating: 8/10)

Generally speaking the puzzles get harder the more you penetrate into the game which is as it should be. Some are very original.

Overall (Rating: 7/10)

Very much of its time but if you like old school treasure hunts over a wide area this could be for you.