AdventP - Review

I grabbed the executable for this via DropBox and I was pleasantly surprised. I was expecting a near exact copy of Colossal Cave but instead it is quite an interesting spin-off; yes it has a wellhouse and a grate and other plagiaristic nods to the original but most of the locations and puzzles are original and well done. Surprisingly XYZZY and the rest of the canonical commands aren't recognised.

It does have the traditional very nasty "maze of twisty passages, all alike" which must be thoroughly mapped lest you miss an item. It also has evidence of being unfinished as you can move through a door and be greeted with "Colossal Cavern is under construction in this area. Please return to this location at a later date for interesting Adventures."

You can however still attain 500 out of 500 points.

In common with games this venerable the two word parser can be annoying but at least it understands GET ALL and VERBOSE and you can save multiple games without the game exiting immediately afterwards.

I am about half way through at the moment and struggling to build a boat but it is holding my interest.

Parser/Vocabulary (Rating: 5/10)

Adequate but missing nouns for some objects. Take all works.

Atmosphere (Rating: 6/10)

Quite evocative although a trifle terse in places. Similar in length to the original game.

Cruelty (Rating: Nasty)

Random deaths through combat, a thirst and lamp timer and a limited inventory.

Puzzles (Rating: 7/10)

On the whole not bad. Mostly logical and traditional.

Overall (Rating: 6/10)

A nice find for those of us who are into IF arcana and old school games.