Producer: Dollar Soft
Retail Price: £5.95
Author: R. Stevenson, C. Hallatt

Suicide Island describes itself as 'an exciting adventure game in 2 parts to test your skill and patience.' The game requires little skill but you will need a certain amount of patience.

The program begins with the most hackneyed joke in the book - Load "" Code in a Basic program or perhaps you prefer the one about the 96K program that loads in 2 parts when really only 82K is possible. Half the computer world might treat the buying public undiscerning imbeciles but I've never quite subscribed to this view and more recently I've sensed a change in the air. The computer games purchaser has now joined the ranks of the greatly discriminating consumer world now that choice and quality have arrived.

Your first graphic shows no more than a motorway simply represented against a two tone background. The plot has it this is an unused stone road. Looks more like a motorway to me. The graphics appear at a very slow rate - 100% Basic.

The slow speed of the graphics is somewhat offset by the fact that there aren't really that many. What graphics you do meet are very simple and some are open to interpretation in the best traditions of modem art. What is inexcusable is the very slow printing of text that forms the body of the adventure. The text does not reside in Basic in the normal way but is printed up using FOR... NEXT loops from character codes ostensibly to prevent examination of the program.

Each location bears quite a long description but unfortunately these consist almost entirely of references to what you might expect to see in the neighbouring locations. The descriptions are inflexible, e.g., a horse and cart ride past the post office every time you visit this location - an opportunity for a more sophisticated plot lost. Later you find yourself standing in front of a locked gate and you have a key, and it would seem logical to try the key in the lock. And it is here you find the program's greatest shortcoming. You try as many wordings and permutations as you can muster but the program refuses to tell you the outcome of your efforts - the cursor simply keeps on reappearing after an appropriate pause.

The program has a good think about your input and then just ignores you. I can only assume I didn't have the correct key. It's not just here. Try and kill - or anything else - the policeman and similarly there's no response. (It does understand kill because later you can, and must kill Eno). Try to enter the Public House or Post Office and up comes that lone cursor - and no report. Why you can't get out of the swamp when UP is a visible exit I don't know and I think you can guess the response that HELP elicits.

Other features of the game include wooden characters, no L abbreviation for the much used LOOK, and the inability to carry more than 3 objects.

Suicide Island is a slow adventure let down by some dubious programming techniques and departs from mainstream adventures solely for these reasons.

Difficulty: Easy - Average
Graphics: Poor
Presentation: Average
Input Facility: Usually ignores your input
Response: Slow
Special Features: Character Interaction, but low level

IT'S ALL IN THE NAME

MICRO: Spectrum 48K
PRICE: £6.00
FORMAT: Cassette
SUPPLIER: Dollarsoft, 3 Everard Glade, Bradway, Sheffield

Sunday morning 10am: the lounge. I slip Genesis on the hifi and collapse into the comfy chair. What could possibly spoil the sense of blissful inner peace thus created? Read on.

This is not going to be an extensive review I'm afraid, as I could not get the program to stay in the Spectrum long enough to find out too much about it.

Suicide Island does not have any loading problems. I know - I had plenty of practice. This is a two part adventure, one part recorded on each side of the tape. The object is to escape from the island in part two with the treasure.

Graphics are spread spasmodically through the adventure, and they are fairly mediocre. I wish software houses would either produce detailed graphics or not bother at all. To have the top half of the screen blue and the bottom half green to denote sky and grass is simply not good enough. Too many programs are including these kind of graphics nowadays to qualify as "graphic" adventures. This "wasted" memory would be far better used in enhancing the atmosphere of a text adventure.

There is no text window on the screen and, consequently, both text and graphics scroll upwards. No help command is available and computer response is almost nonexistent. Unrecognised and invalid inputs are just ignored which means that an intelligent guess does not even get a "you can't do that yet".

Many buildings are described in the text and defy all attempts to gain entrance. These appear to be mere window dressing, and therefore rather pointless. By now I had entered commands on several occasions only to be faced with a black screen followed by a © 1982 Sinclair Research Ltd.

Sunday morning 11am: have I really got to load this again?

Suicide Island lacks also in atmosphere, and there are one or two silly mistakes, such as dropping the food only to find it still in your inventory. One location describes a field to the north (you can't go north) and another one says there is a tree to the south. On going south there are no trees to be found.

Arriving at a shop, I find that it is closed, so I "wait". Okay, so I have another look and yes, you guessed - wipeout.

Sunday lunchtime: scraping remnants of my Spectrum off the wall.

This program is aptly named Suicide Island as it constantly self destructs. If this is a preproduction version, there's a lot of work to be done. If not...