You are Jack Williams, intrepit Crime Reporter for the Daily News hot on the trail of a scoop. For the past six months people have been mysteriously disappearing in the Dartmoor area amidst tales of black magic and your editor agrees to let you investigate. You drive westwards out of London towards the countryside and just as dusk is falling and a chilling fog falls you arrive at the obligatory spooky hotel. The game is written using PAW, playtested by Joan Pancott and Lorna Patterson and is in two parts: the first is relatively simple, that means I got through it fairly easily with a few nudges from Peter in the right direction while I was at the Convention. You have to book into your hotel and have a good look around till curiousity gets you into real trouble. This includes quite a few neat little puzzles so no disappointments here. The second part is really interesting, which is why it has taken me till now to complete my review. You start off trapped inside a barn and after cleverly escaping have to search your captors house, before they return to bump you off, escape to the moors where there is a nasty bog waiting to suck you down. Having survived so far you encounter the friendly locals of a small village whose idea of hospitality is to provide you with poisoned beer which you cannot refuse. The real trick is to examine positively everything. I got really stuck in a couple of places and thought I had done everything there was to do only to find I hadn't. All in all a really good game that can solved by using a little thought (a lot in my case), some swearing and a lot of searching. Don't expect to get it all done in one sitting unless you're under 21 with a fondness for furry creatures. Reviewed by Ann Robinson using an Amstrad CPC 6128
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