Producer: Firebird
Retail Price: £2.50
Language: Quill
Author: Simon Jay

The Helm, a text-only Quilled adventure, is another Firebird game on offer at a budget price. The game's chief characteristic is a curiously verbose approach to the business of communicating with the player. These witty distractions dominate and dictate the character of the game and it is to the extent that you can stomach such incessant loquacity which will decide your opinions on this game. It is a little unfortunate the game combines such a windy style with a redefined character set which is so difficult to read along with curious colour combinations (like the dreaded red on black) as this slows the proceedings to a snail's pace.

Whatever the criticism that can be levelled at the long-windedness of the dialogue it must be said this game has a distinctive flavour and it would be wrong to assume everyone will find it too much to take. As in all comedy, some lines are really funny while others leave you non-plussed. To give you some idea of what you can expect here is a fair representation of some of the lines you will meet.

'Upon further opticular contemplation of the immediate surrounding environment I find the following',

What would you have me do next your Brillianceness?'.

'Thy wish is my command your most eminent eminence. The task has been completely completed Sire'.

'Give me your next wondrous command oh all intelligent one'.

On cutting a rope loose you are greeted with, 'It drops to the floor with the distinctive sound that only a rope hitting the ground can make. Hit me with another gem!'. When attempting something foolish, like picking up an object you already have you meet, 'Far be it for me, a mere servant to criticise such an omnipotent one as you, but I've got that!' or, 'Although your last command was intellectually superior, I was unable to comply with it'.

You see what I mean it either drives you potty or you secretly find it rather amusing.

It's not just the replies which get this treatment, how about this location description? 'I am standing on a vast mountain plateau with barely anything in sight worth mentioning except an old cigar butt (probably from the same not-so-litter conscious native as found elsewhere), and one tree (probably not the same one as mentioned in the Covenant Chronicles)'.

A lesser, but no less unusual feature of this game, is the sound, where typing a letter creates a noise not unlike that emanating when a pacman gobbles a pep-pill while ENTER finishes it off with one reminiscent of a pacman catching and munching a fleeing ghost. All part of the humour.

There is a bit of the cheap game syndrome about this one which was not so apparent in Sub Sunk which keeps itself to the very precise task of escaping from a sunk sub. The Helm has a small sleepy village adjacent to a barren desert and all the environs occupy just the one location. The overall impression is of an old fashioned game, the sort that was once play3d in order to gain experience of adventuring with the sure knowledge that better was soon to follow.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: quite difficult
Graphics: none
Input facility: verb/noun
Response: instant

Publisher: Firebird
Memory: 48K
Price: £2.50

The Helm confers immortality on its wearers. The current owner is the local, evil Lich but he does not have all the pieces of the sacred headgear. Without all the bits he cannot become an eternal Lich so it is up to you to find the remaining disguised portions and enter the wicked one's castle. There you can steal the final piece. The Lich will not take kindly to this.

The game is text only and composed in medieval script which is occasionally difficult to read. The interpreter's responses are servile and sometimes long-winded - instead of 'What next?' you get 'What would you have me do next, Your Brillianceness?'.

The text scrolls up the screen in different colours and has a startling kaleidoscopic effect. Despite that the descriptions and general information are quite full and there is a fine tongue-in-cheek approach to the business of magical adventure.

There is a wide range of deduction problems ranging from the traditional crossing of the ravine to defeating a mesmerising Psyak - which manifests itself as a ball of light.

As far as I am concerned, Firebird can carry on bringing out programs like these. They both show that text adventures can be fun without having to be self-important in attitude.

MACHINE: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: Firebird
PRICE: £2.50

Have you the cunning, power and knowledge to crack the dark one's lair and discover the Helm of Immortality?

Find this fabled object and wrest it from the grasp of Lich and you will win the gift of immortality.

The Helm is an adventure text game in which you have to solve puzzles and perform certain tasks to solve this entertaining riddle.

You may need a long life - if not immortality - to solve this.

The Helm is another Spectrum game written using the Quill and is text only. The object is to find and restore the sacred and powerful Helm of Immortality, currently held by the evil Lich. I groaned inwardly as I read about the plot - about as original as a sandwich in a lunch box.

The Adventure lived up to my expectations in terms of its plot and problems - nothing special, as they say. Locked chest in first location. Solution - open chest with key I am carrying. Get knife since it's sure to be needed elsewhere. Come across unclimbable rope hanging from tree. Solution - cut rope with knife. To be fair, they do get more difficult, but seem rather mundane.

What does make the game different, though, is the style of text. Instead of saying "I see..." followed by a list of objects present, the narrative goes: "Upon further careful opticular contemplation of the immediate surrounding environment, I find the following" and then the list. Unusual the first time round, maddening by the tenth.

But it doesn't end there! Should you type a command that the program doesn't understand, such as "Move rubble" at the blocked mountain pass, you will receive the following message: "Unfortunately your subhuman linguistical attempts at simple communication are beyond me. Try conversing in the Queen's English."

A message that strong is a dangerous thing to put in any Adventure with a vocabulary any smaller than the standard set by Infocom. Best to play safe, on the basis that the programmer is more likely to have made an error of omission in the vocab., than the player a typing or spelling error.

Overall, the game performed well, but didn't hold my interest for very long and the attempts at humour wore thin very quickly. What I did like was the squelchy sound every time I pressed a key. Just what I thought a Spectrum keyboard should sound like!

The Helm is for 48k Spectrum from Firebird Software.

Firebird, the BT company who made such an impact with their first collection of SW have added to their range with the introduction of seven new programs in their Silver, £2.50, series.

THE HELM is another adventure but this time text only. This program found a place in my heart for the lovely tongue in cheek approach which it adopts. Humour is a matter of preference but I found myself playing over and over again to discover what other comments the programmer had included. Nice one Simon Jay, highly recommended!