Producer: Digital Fantasia
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £9.95
Language: Machine code
Author: Brian Howarth

Circus is another in the Digital Fantasia series of graphics and text adventures by Brian Howarth.

In this jolly sounding story you are a motorist whose car is stranded in the middle of nowhere having run out of petrol. What else can you do but get your empty petrol can from the boot and set off in search of the juice of life? Darkness is settling about you when you stumble across an unexpected sight in a deserted valley - a Circus. The music and laughter emanating from it suggest a Performance in full swing. Despite the strangeness of the situation, you are obviously in luck - petrol cannot be far away. More fool you!

As you open the gate in the outer fence around the Circus all sounds abruptly cease - and all that's left is an eerily deserted tent in the middle of nowhere. As it says in the intro, a long, long night is ahead of you. Will you survive and get the petrol, will you get to the bottom of the Circus's secrets and escape....?

COMMENTS

Use of colour: simple and effective
Graphics: average, may be switched off to speed up adventure
Sound: nothing to speak of

Another typical Digital Fantasia adventure with lots to do and pick up. And picking up things in the right order is essential if you are going to get anywhere at all. I really thought my wits were being tested to the extreme with this one. The usefulness of some of the objects littered about did not become clear until it was really too late to do anything about remedying the situation. Stumbling around for too long in the tent caused my trusty flashlight to go on the blink - further stumblings caused me to die.... But I'll try again with the helpful advice sheet you may send for. Maybe I'll get further - although Brian Howarth is a devious helper.

Circus is quite intriguing, but I felt it lacked a little excitement and overall the Circus tent has very few locations to explore, unless hidden places went unnoticed. Word recognition is a little on the meagre side, and the graphics may look cute but don't add anything - which is probably why they can be switched off. Altogether, just a little pricey for what you get.

A fast, fun adventure this - I managed to get into the tent, swam with friendly sealions, tried unsuccessfully to wake a sleeping tiger and after a lot of exploring made an explosive flying escape from the otherwise closed tent and reached my car with the necessary petrol - only to find that I couldn't drive off and leave the Spirits behind to languish. I must have missed a plot twist somewhere! But I couldn't get back into the tent and that was that. Great fun!

Producer: Digital Fantasia, 48K
£9.95
Author: Brian Howarth

Digital Fantasia specialise in marketing adventure games, a unique feature of which is that you may have the graphics switched on or off. Things move faster with them off, especially as the Hi-res drawings do take a bit of time to appear. On the other hand, there are often clues in the graphics which aren't apparent in the text. Circus is number 6 in the series, and starts off when your car runs out of petrol in the middle of nowhere. You search for help on foot and come across a noisy circus, apparently in full swing, miles from anywhere. As you enter the jolly place, all the sound and lights die. The big top is a graveyard of evil spirits. It's nice to stumble across a generator, as wandering around the darkness inside the tent can prove fatal. But nothing is so simple - the generator won't work without a cable plugged in to feed the lights. Clowns leave messages, tightrope walking requires a safety net, can you be a human cannonball? An addictive game which requires a good memory and plenty of ingenuity. Overall CRASH rating 75%, machine code.

ROLL UP, ROLL UP! CIRCUS HAS COME TO TOWN

Quentin Heath investigates the secret of the Big Top.

As the number of Spectrum adventures on the market increases, it is difficult to find one which is different in either concept or content. Adventures are usually graphics or text only and take place in underground locations, mysterious fantasy worlds, on battle fields, or in outer space.

That is not true of the Mysterious Adventure series from Digital Fantasia. One adventure from the company shows the differences from other adventures and the advances in both plot and quality the company has brought to the adventure market. The game is called Circus and it is for the 48K Spectrum.

Circus is slightly different in format from other adventures, as you can switch between high-resolution graphics and text with an extra push of the ENTER key. The plot is unusual, as it takes place in and around a shadowy circus ground.

Few hints are given as to what you should do in the circus or what you are seeking, but that is as it should be. The packaging gives some hints as to what to do when it indicates that you have become stranded near a circus when your car runs out of petrol.

The car is not the starting-point of the adventure and that could confuse you. It is a deliberate ruse to convince you that the car contains nothing of interest. First, you will find yourself in a field with only a few compass-point directional movements, such as south, east and west, from which to choose.

At the start it may seem as if you are limited in the moves you can make and to get anywhere into the game you need to discover an arcane secret of great difficulty. Nothing could be further from the truth. All you have to do is think of a different and more specific type of movement command, such as go, and then specify the direction in which you want to move. That makes the game very complex, as you will have to name the sites you want to visit in different sectors.

The main sectors in Circus are the field in which you start, the road and car which you can reach, using Go road followed by Go car, and the circus exterior and interior where much of the action will take place. Each of those sectors is discussed in the hints and tips panel.

One of the quests you will have to undertake is to find the petrol with which to fill your car to make your getaway. It could be in the generator which you will find near the circus or it could be in the dark depths of the tent. The generator is not working, so there is no power to go exploring in the tent. You will have to find your own, with a little help from hints and tips.

The secret of the petrol lies in the tent but you might like to explore the traps and pitfalls before you start to be involved with the quest. Learning from experience is usually the name of the game but there are some problems you can avoid with commonsense.

You may make a reasonable guess that most of the circus act equipment you find is in the tent and in the circus ring. The ladder you find hanging in mid-air. It seems to go up to the roof of the tent and is a temptation - if you ever wanted to swing on the trapeze you will find your wish granted if you can find the proper words to swing up to the top beams and canvas of the roof. If you jump from the trapeze you will land on the canvas of the roof and find nothing.

If you have a knife you could become a vandal, as the computer will accept the command to cut the canvas. Not much else seems to be possible from that vantage point and it is at that point, when you want to return to the ground, that you may have difficulty.

You may wish you had a map of the steps you took to get up to your precarious position. If you have not made a map you will become confused between ladders and swings. What you must not do is take out your rope, if you have it, and throw it. You might expect to find a quick way to the ground but the only thing you will get is a lost rope.

One other place to avoid is the human canon, unless you are trying to escape from the clown who keeps appearing. That character does little damage but he is difficult to follow.

One last strange, but useful, tip which can be given is that you should try and dig with your spade at every opportunity. No more said but you never know what you might discover.

Unfortunately not all software companies have the definition of an adventure game, in the computer sense, completely correct. Penguin Books calls its Korth Trilogy an adventure consisting of three separate cassette-and-book packages.

The packages contain only a series of arcade games based on all-too-familiar concepts. Many of them seem to have been written first, with the story-line slotted around them afterwards.

The saddest aspect is that the concept of this series of packages, based on traditional adventure lines, is fascinating and more software companies should try it.

The only advice I can give if you still intend to buy Korth Trilogy is to keep the science fiction story-book with the package and throw away the cassette. The relationship between the two is thin and you would be much less embarrassed if you did not look at the software. Penguin is, on the whole, better as a publisher of literature and might be advised to stay in that field.

CHRISTMAS CRACKER!

"What are you thinking of doing for the Christmas issue?" asked Tim, our production editor, always eager to tick off unfilled pages.

I nearly choked on my coffee. With the August heat making me sticky with perspiration, nothing could have been further from my mind than Christmas. But words have to be written long before the magazine reaches the newsstands, so I shut my eyes and thought of snow.

The heat pouring in through the window became a blazing log fire, and the pub lunch settled in me like Turkey and Christmas Pud. I pictured the telly, the Queen just finishing and the obligatory Christmas circus about to start. Circuses! Ghost stories! Eureka! My Christmas review!!

I so startled the office that Linda pasted a title upside down, and Clare stopped dead in the middle of a Rebecca Corwell letter...

Your car out of petrol miles from anywhere, empty can in hand, you cross the fields in the gathering dusk.

Suddenly you come across an unnerving site - a big-top complete with all the usual trappings - a generator, maintenance wagon, and animals. Entering the tent you find the ring, where all is deserted. But wait! Is that a clown running off into the shadows?

What to do now? To pass the time, here's a chance to become a circus artiste. Tame the cats, try your skill on the trapeze, and maybe walk a tightrope! I found I made a rather nasty mess on the canvas when shot from the cannon, but my tightrope walking is coming on a treat! I no longer get killed when I fall off!

What's the point of it all? To discover that, you will have to play Circus for quite some time, and to reach your goal, even longer!

Circus is one of Brian Howarth's Mysterious Adventures, and did, on occasions, send a cold shiver down my spine. For the mysterious inhabitants of the circus are doomed to languish in eternal captivity unless...

Not an easy game to complete, and ideas are needed to solve it. A point obviously not missed by the author, for if in frustration you use words best not printed here, the computer will reply "What a foul mouth you have!"

Every similar in presentation to a Scott Adams adventure, Circus can be recommended as Christmas fare to almost all Adventurers. Circus is available for a wide range of systems, including 48k Spectrum, BBC (A or B), TRS-80, Colour Genie, Atari 400/800, Commodore 64, Dragon 32, 16k ZX81 and Lynx. The suppliers vary from micro to micro, so would-be purchasers should scan the adverts.

And now I must get back to start that generator - time to turn on the Christmas tree lights!

Reviewer: Keith Campbell