| ★ AMSTRAD CPC ★ GAMESLIST ★ ICE WARRIOR (c) STRATEGY SOFTWARE ★ |
THE AMSTRAD USER |
At last - a new adventure for 6128 owners - and it's Australian! A new adventure game with a difference has just been released in Australia. The game has been developed in Australia yet uses many features other adventure games from overseas employ. Ice Wizard has been written solely for the CPC6128 computer and comes on disk only due to its length. It is an all graphic adventure, with each location calling up a picture. A choice is provided though as to whether you want to play the game using the illustrations or just play it as an all text adventure. The graphics used in the game have been produced from an arts package specifically designed to produce pictures for CPC adventure games. This graphics development software has also been written in Australia. The object of the game itself is to try to save the world from freezing up thereby exterminating all life. Only the Ice Wizard can reverse the process but he first requires various items that have been hidden in certain parts of the Earth. You have been assigned to locate these items and take them to the Wizard's castle that lies somewhere in the Ice Kingdom. The quest begins in one of the last remaining warm regions of the Earth. You have to find your own way to the Ice Kingdom locating the necessary items along the way. Fortunately there are no nasties along the way such as monsters or ravenous wolves, and unfortunately no people to help you. You are entirely on your own and need to use all your experience as an adventurer in order to achieve your objective. The game in fact is not an easy one to play and therefore not suitable for beginners. Only seasoned adventurers who really want a challenge should attempt to solve it. There are some useful features in the game. One is Ramsave which when evoked immediately saves the game position into the computer's own memory (not a permanent save). This does away with having to save the game position onto disk each time a weary adventurer plays it safe before executing a particular hazardous action. Once the command 'Ramsave' has been used you have the option to go back to that position by evoking 'Ramload'. It must be remembered though that Ramsave and Ramload is not the same as Save and Load. The latter two would be used to save and restore the game position to and from disk before switching off the computer. Ramsave and Ramload facilities are deleted once the computer is switched off. Other useful commands are 'Get All' and 'Drop All' which allows the player to either pick up or dispense of a number of objects without specifying each one by name. The game also understands full sentence input and string commands which is very useful when you wish to execute a number of actions in one command line. For example, you can type in 'E and E and N and Get Medallion and Examine it, etc.' You will notice the use of the word 'it' which is allowed once an object has been specified (as in this case when we said 'Get Medallion'). Another time saving feature is evident when using the string command to move through a number of locations. Whilst moving to the location specified all in between locations give text descriptions only until you reach the final location desired and once there the appropriate picture is then loaded onto the screen. Overall, the author of Ice Wizard (Barrie Eaton) has produced a good quality game that can be ranked at a similar standard to that of a Level 9 adventure. As an all Australian game we recommend our adventure public to support it and the author. Ice Wizard can only be obtained through this magazine and, as a bonus on the reverse side of the disk, there is another exciting text only adventure by the same author and carries all the features as Ice Wizard such as Ramsave and Ramload. The game is called 'Secret of the Dark Manor' and again is not a game for the rank amateur as a certain amount of ingenuity is needed to solve it. The PCMag |
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