Pete Gerrard and the team at Ducksoft have been churning out a range of quite reasonable text adventures, comparable in some ways to the Quilled Spectrum games but with the technical know-how supplied by Pete's own book on writing adventures.  
The problem is that here is already a definitive, and, I have to say, much superior version of the game available for almost all home micros at just a couple of pounds more. For instance, Ducksoft have made a point that their version sticks exactly to the original layout of the game, by which I suppose they mean that it does not have the 70 extra locations, voluminous prose, or attractively redesigned text of the Level 9 version of Colossal. Ducksoft's effort is quite competent, with adequate response speeds, etc, but playing it seems to be like reading a Reader's Digest precis of a great novel - the skeleton of the plot is there but none of the nuances. Unless you are very hard up or are an adventure purist who regards any tampering with the original as an affront, you get what you pay for, ie, less. Price : £7 Tony Kendle, PopularComputingWeekly
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