Producer: Gilsoft
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £5.95
Language: Machine code
Author: Tom Davies

Under the general trading of The Gold Collection, Africa Gardens is one of Gilsoft's new adventure games which has been written with The Quill adventure writing utility. While the game loads, there is a very detailed title-page to admire, showing a low wall, topped with luxuriant foliage and split by a large stairway leading up to the colonial-looking mansion which tops the hill. A board in the garden says, Africa Gardens Hotel.

After a long journey you find yourself standing outside the faded Victorian guest house under a cold, wintry sky. Evening is closing in with misty rain adding its eerily swirling touch to the Hammer horror film-like scene-setter. You are told, 'Mr Robinson insists on your every comfort in the hope that you will extend your stay. Indeed, Mr Robinson hopes that you may be amongst his many guests who feel they can never leave.'

With this chilling formal courtesy, the player is led into a deceptively quiet, elegant and respectable mansion redolent of past guests and their comfortable stays. The mechanics of the game are what we are used to. You can get objects, drop them and 'spell' them, which releases any latent magical powers or breaks other spells. Some objects may help, others may hinder or not be needed until later - and as yet unknown - locations. Africa Gardens uses the Quill's inbuilt objects conveyable figure, which means you may only carry four at a time. A lit candle may be a boon for this murky hotel's upper reaches, and to have the Book of Spells is sheer magic (power to your elbow). Needless to say, Africa Gardens has its very own secret room, a few priest-holes and its hidden treasure that is very well hidden! Unlike many hotels, this one has only one exit, and the management sincerely hope you don't get to use it!

Although very largely text only, the author has dropped into a few sudden graphics here and there.

COMMENTS

Response: instant
Graphics: simple text in coloured boxes, some object graphics and a few location graphics all instantly generated

Quilled adventures have an instant response to input, so there's no waiting around. The text is very clear, with usable objects tagged by coloured bars, some of which flash. Using Inventory, when you are carrying four objects, can make for a veritable fireworks display of colours and flashing! There are numerous locations and a map is an essential, especially when you have to keep dropping objects in order to pick others up. You can then note on the map where exactly you left them. The hotel's rooms echo with sounds of people never quite seen, cigar smoke lingers in the air, warm food is still on the dining-room table - some of it not very nice at all. The descriptions are excellent, detailed and dripping with atmosphere. The normal horrors of grammar and mix-spelling so common in many adventures seem to have been winkled out in this one, apart from the spalshing water in the fountain - but perhaps that's a clue?

I think this game has the best atmosphere created by the location descriptions in any adventure yet. You can literally picture the rooms in your mind's eye, even smell them. So, even if you never get anywhere near a solution, exploring the house is an experience in itself. And there's always this nagging feeling that if you start again you might just find that overlooked little room that will make all the difference. It's very addictive.

In most adventures some form of LOOK, SEARCH or EXAMINE seems to work, but not in this one. This leaves you bereft of the usual options for discovering more about an object or a situation, and forces you to be even more ingenious than usual. If you're a sucker for a supernatural challenge then a visit to Africa Gardens may well be beneficial for your health (meals apart - tasty-looking dishes can make you throw up when you discover what they really are). The pets, too, can take against you for no apparent reason. Despite your inability to EXAMINE or EXPLORE, exploration or the house and the gloomy gardens with their freshly turned soft earth results in descriptions that might have come from a Dennis Wheatley novel and quitting could well be more to do with having to keep looking over your shoulder while playing than a failure to find the exit - and don't forget, Mr Robinson returns at three...

IMAGINATION UNLIMITED

Is Gilsoft weak Quilled? Quentin Heath thinks not.

The Quill, an adventure game generator from Gilsoft, has evoked a mixed reaction from critics. The technical excellence of the program is not disputed but its spawn, the games compiled using it, have been treated with suspicion by both seasoned adventure players and critics.

The critics have been quick to say that the plethora of games generated by The Quill, and released by Gilsoft and others, are almost identical in structure and, in many cases, futile and uninventive. The argument is that anything which has been cloned from another program will be inferior to a program which has been handwritten from beginning to end.

Rather than taking the well-worn path and examining The Quill again, I decided to look at the final products from that program which Gilsoft has called the Gold Collection.

The adventures in the Gold series are varied in content and complexity. The six titles are Spyplane, a story of espionage; Magic Castle and Barsak the Dwarf, which lie in the Dungeons and Dragons field; Mindbender, for science fiction enthusiasts, African Gardens, an adventure for lovers of mystery; and Diamond Trail, for the specialist in detection and whodunnits.

Most of the adventures are easy to play but in an irritating way. A case in point is Barsak the Dwarf. You play Barsak, who must search an ancient castle for nine treasures and a visitors' book which you must sign to leave alive. According to the critics the game would be simply a case of wandering round a maze of locations, built around a standard structure, but The Quill is so versatile that it allows a designer to build extra facilities into an adventure.

For instance, in Barsak the author has created a sttuat ion where the main character will die unless he can find food within 17 moves. Once food has been found, in a lar of pickles, a quest for water must begin.

Barsak contains a quest within a quest. The dwarf must look continually for food while searching for treasure. There is no end, except for the limitations of memory space, to the number of quests which can be built into one package.

One criticism of The Quill which can be sustained is that the program has to put some restrictions on the way in which an adventure runs so that it can operate. The Quill limits input to a compiled program to one line at a time. For most entries needing one verb and a noun, that would be sufficient but if, for instance, you want to pick up more than two objects you must select the first two and press 'ENTER', then the second two, and follow the same process until all the objects have been collected. That seems to be the only instance in which The Quill affects an adventure in an adverse way.

To show the types of adventure The Quill can produce I compared Barsak to another adventure from the Gold series, Spyplane. The plot is certainly different and concerns a search for submarines which you see from your aircraft. By comparing the HELP and INVENTORY functions with those of Barsak you can see the differences between the two programs instantly.

Spyplane is more developed as an adventure. The descriptions are lengthy and the INVENTORY has been used more as an additional HELP sheet than as a list of equipment. For instance, you are told about the state of the instruments on that page.

The author has also built in an instructions option which gives hints on how to play a particular part of the game. With HELP you must take pot luck on a reply but INSTRUCTIONS is more informative.

Spyplane is more difficult to play than Barsak as you find yourself in an aircraft and are told very little about what you have to do. By using the instruments you will learn more about your task but at the risk of alerting the enemy.

The descriptions of the terrain are evocative but not over-long. There are no spelling mistakes in the text, which is more than can be said for some handwritten textual adventures.

Spyplane is also supplied with a leaflet showing a map of the area in which your aircraft is flying. That is a necessity, as you cannot use graphics, a growing area in adventure games, with The Quill. No doubt some people would find the lack of graphics, where necessary, a fault with the program. It could, however, be argued that setting-up graphics occupies much space within memory which could be used for more text and locations. The lack of graphics facilities in The Quill is therefore, a benefit to users in the long run.

Looking at The Quill it may be possible to see the way in which an adventure is fitted over a pre-defined grid of locations each time a game is created but the games produced by it hide the mechanical creation process well. It is a case of not being able to see the seams of an adventure, because of the way the author has the imagination to create something different. It is, after all, the programmer and not the program which controls the way a game progresses.

The limitations of The Quill are only those of formatting the screen and the way responses are put into the computer. The Quill is adaptable enough to cope with new ideas of the programmer, such as an instruction function in Spylane or the continual quests for food and drink in Barsak the Dwarf. Neither are there restrictions on the storyline. Games could be set in fictional or realistic surroundings - the program does not differentiate.

Essentially The Quill offers the programmer a new high-level language rather like Basic. Although Basic has only a set number of statements, the number of applications to which you can apply the language are endless and restricted only imagination.

In the proper hands, The Quill produces programs on a par with handwritten commercial programs and it is that qualification which has to be made clear. The Quill is a tool, just as is Basic. With skilled use it can do wonders.

MAKER: Gilsoft
MACHINE: 48K Spectrum
PRICE: £5.95

Africa Gardens on the other hand is something of a gem. Ignore the breezy summer hols cover artwork and prepare yourself for an excellent old dark house mystery, full of creaking doors and reeking cobwebs. Beautifully written and garishly coloured it's to my mind the best game in the collection. Indeed it looks set to be fave of the year, which is no mean feat considering the competition. Author Tom Davies has even used the Quill to build up some quite respectable graphics! Yes, it can be done folks! Trapped inside an old dark hotel you must solve the mystery of the missing guests before joining their forgotten ranks! While creeping tremulously about the ground floor I fully expected to bump into a deranged Norman Bates and his flock of screeching violinists! I dread to think what waits upstairs once I light the candle...

Gilsoft has demonstrated its faith in its adventure designer program, The Quill, by producing a series of adventures which have been written with its help. Each adventure is excellent and there is great variety in the series.

Africa Gardens is set in a haunted hotel, where voices can be heard in the next room but people can never be seen. Each unnerving location is described in depth and certain sections are illustrated. It is largely an adventure of exploration in which objects found help with movement to other locations.

Mindbender runs along very different lines. The player begins in an office notable only for its lack of interest. One movement, though, sends the bemused player into an intricate Welsh adventure.

Barsak the Dwarf demonstrates the ability of The Quill to set a time limit on an action. Soon after the game begins the player becomes hungry and must find a jar of pickles before starving. Once that problem has been overcome, thirst rears its ugly bead. Again, it is a good adventure but it does not reach the standard of Castle Blackstar, to which it is remarkably similar.

Diamond Trail is possibly the tightest-written adventure on the market. Every object has a use and every location must be visited at least once. Once again, hunger sets in early and there is also a homicidal maniac chasing you with a gun.

Another problem is that taking certain objects results in your being arrested. Can you survive to eat the hamburger, let alone solve the quest? One difficulty occurs late in the game. The author has been unfairly sneaky inside the railway station and once you are there you have almost finished the adventure. Save the game before presenting your ticker or you may find yourself having to repeat the entire adventure.

All in all, an excellent series of very different adventures, produced by Gilsoft, 30 Hawthorn Road, Barry, South Glamorgan, price £5.95 each.