| ★ AMSTRAD CPC ★ GAMESLIST ★ THE CASE OF THE MIXED UP SHYMER (c) SHARKSOFT/WOW SOFTWARE ★ |
Computer & Video Games | Amstrad Action |
Sandra Sharkey edits the monthly magazine Adventure Probe, so she must have seen quite a few games in her time. The Pilg was intrigued, therefore, to see how she herself would put together an adventure. The Case of the Mixed Up Shymer (to give it its full title) gave me just that opportunity. People keep claiming that do-it-yourself adventure kits like PAW, GAC. and The Quill open up the market to everyone who wishes to produce adventures. It's easy to exaggerate this possibility - after all, everyone nowadays can get access to a pen and paper, but that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone can write a book. You need time, patience, ana dedication And it certainly doesn't mean that §veryone can write a GOOD book...The same applies to adventures, but at least now those few (and they are few) geniuses for adventure design need no longer be held back by lack of programming talent. Shymer is a text-only game programmed using GAC. That in itself is a surprise but is. Sandra tells me, due simply to the memory limitations of GAC As a personal preference she also believes that "not having graphics does not detract from the game". There's been endless debate over this point in every adventure column the Pilg has had the pleasure to edit over the past four years My own view is that there is no doubt that there is a role for graphics in adventures, but that role must be created by the game itself - you can't just tack on pictures and assume they will enhance the adventure, something a lot of GAC programmers do simply because the program makes it so easy. Sandra's game is highly original in some respects, and very traditional in others. The Island of Nersree is populated by numérous characters drawn from the world of nursery rhyme, but the role of each has become distorted and must be corrected by the player. For example, Little Bo Peep has FOUND her sheep, and Humpty Dumpty delights in chucking himself off walls all the time. You must put the world to rights, of course, and restore the illogical sense of the nursery rhyme in every case. During play there are numérous appearances by the characters, all highly original. Little Bo Peep keeps yelling "Get lost" at her sheep. Old King Cole runs backward and forward stinking of alcohol, Little Tommy Thin dumps your cat. Dok Wat Son (Doctor Watson - geddit?) down a well, and Little Miss Muffet...well, let's face it, this is probably the only adventure in which you're likely to find a tuffet. The trouble these days is that a huge gap has arisen between state-of-the-art games with stunning graphics, complex parsers, and interactive characters at one end of the scale (the £19.95 end) and games like Shymer at the other (£1.99 end). It can be a bit of depressing shock to load up a game and be thrown back three years into a world where most inputs require only two words, responses are frequently dismissive and unhelpful, and location descriptions are limited to one sentence, a list of exits, and mention of visible objects. But where such a game, however simple in its construction, succeeds in introducing an original theme, has no glaring bugs, is not too easy to complete, and manages to raise the occasional smile, then surely it deserves an audience. Shymer is only £1.99 - if you don't expect too much, then you won't be disappointed. AA |
|  |
|
Page créée en 236 millisecondes et consultée 2335 fois L'Amstrad CPC est une machine 8 bits à base d'un Z80 à 4MHz. Le premier de la gamme fut le CPC 464 en 1984, équipé d'un lecteur de cassettes intégré il se plaçait en concurrent du Commodore C64 beaucoup plus compliqué à utiliser et plus cher. Ce fut un réel succès et sorti cette même années le CPC 664 équipé d'un lecteur de disquettes trois pouces intégré. Sa vie fut de courte durée puisqu'en 1985 il fut remplacé par le CPC 6128 qui était plus compact, plus soigné et surtout qui avait 128Ko de RAM au lieu de 64Ko. |
