{fh200AA00Quickie PD Game Reviews
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by Mike Williams

{fb1FF5555             HACK
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{fb10000FFArchimedes conversion by{fb1000000 Andrew Bray

{fb10000FFPlot{fb1000000 This is a conversion of a sort of adventure game with primitive graphics. The dungeon is generated random- ly each time you start a fresh game. Most of the rules of Dungeons and Dragons apply, and most of the monsters, weapons and spells available in Dungeons and Dragons can be found somewhere in the dungeon.

In this game, you also have a pet dog (which you can give a name to) who sometimes helps by attacking monsters, but more often gets in your way or fetches items that you'd rather he left alone. There are over 60 general classes of monster, and some of those classes (e.g. Dragon and Daemon) have several different species of monster in them.

{fb10000FFPlayability{fb1000000 If it wasn't for the bug - see below - this would be my favourite of this type of game. As well as a comp- rehensive implementation of Dungeons and Dragons, there is a nice touch of humour.

{fb10000FFGraphics{fb1000000 Primitive black and white graphics.

{fb10000FFBugs{fb1000000 There is one BIG bug, which makes the game unplayable seriously, and that is that the program crashes if it tries to re-load a saved level. This means that you can't save a game, and you can't go back up to a higher level - you can only go down to unexplored levels. 

{fb10000FFFeatures{fb1000000 None that work.

{fb10000FFTypical Duration{fb1000000 5 minutes

{fb1FF5555             HANGMAN (1)

{fb10000FFAuthor{fb1000000 Brian Trott

{fb10000FFPlot{fb1000000 It's the game of hangman. This one has fancy ray traced graphics and nice sound effects.

{fb10000FFPlayability{fb1000000 It plays very nicely. It could be improved by having larger word lists, but since the words are in simple text files it is possible to write your own. (If anyone wants some longer wordfiles I've got a few interesting ones)

{fb10000FFGraphics{fb1000000 Excellent ray traced graphics.

{fb10000FFFeatures{fb1000000 None

{fb10000FFTypical Duration{fb1000000 As long as you like.

{fb1FF5555             HANGMAN (2)

{fb10000FFAuthor{fb1000000 Fillip

{fb10000FFPlot{fb1000000 It's the game of hangman. This one has a time limit and a complex scoring system. When a word is not guessed correctly, the game ends and the score is calculated.

{fb10000FFPlayability{fb1000000 Yuk. The method for specifying your chosen letter is to scroll left and right through the list of remaining letters and hit up-arrow when you reach the one you want - this is tedious, non-intuitive, awkwardly slow (when you're under a time limit) and not very responsive.

A cardinal sin for Hangman games is that some of the words are spelled incorrectly - it's a bit unfair for someone to lose the game because they failed to guess that the missing letter in BADMIN{_TON is G.

{fb10000FFGraphics{fb1000000 Nothing special

{fb10000FFFeatures{fb1000000 High score table (not saved to disk)

{fb10000FFTypical Duration{fb1000000 2 minutes

{fb1FF5555             HATRIS
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{fb10000FFAuthor{fb1000000 Joeri De Winter

{fb10000FFPlot{fb1000000 Like TETRIS, objects descend from the top of the screen and collect in piles on the floor. In this case the objects are hats, which must be collected into piles of similar hats. Completing two piles at once gives you a fireball.

{fb10000FFPlayability{fb1000000 Not bad. There's a wide range of difficulty levels, and you can start at any level. There is some deeper strategy, in deciding whether to leave a pile incomplete in the hope of getting a fireball later.

{fb10000FFGraphics{fb1000000 OK

{fb10000FFFeatures{fb1000000 Multitasks. Pause control. Start at any level. Mouse or keyboard control.

{fb10000FFTypical Duration{fb1000000 5 minutes.