Producer: Phipps Associates
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £5.95
Language: Machine code

With another title sounding like an adventure game, Phipps offer The House of the Living Dead. This is a simple maze arcade game, a post-Pac Man variant. It seems your travel agent has booked you into a rather odd kind of hostelry, where you wake up in the night with a bat flitting above your head. This noisome happening alerts you to the fact that your other room mates are all ghouls and monsters and creeping severed hands. Not a pleasant sight!

Fortunately, having seen many cheap Dracula movies, you are aware that if only you can collect the four pieces of the cross from the room's corners and bring them all to the centre, the life force which will emanate from it will kill the nasties off and let you progress to the next level where there will be even more horrors awaiting you. Serves you right for opting to take a cheap holiday package.

COMMENTS

Control keys: cursors
Joystick: Kempston
Keyboard play: average
Colour: reasonable
Graphics: good
Sound: average
Skill levels: gets harder
Lives: 4

It's an extremely simple game to play, just move your man around the uncomplicated maze and collect the four L-shaped bits of a cross. In the centre is a red square. If you are carrying a piece of the cross when you touch it, the piece is automatically located and you can go after the next piece. There are four different types of monster, starting off with one on screen one, two on screen two and so on. With each level you just get more monsters to cope with. On that basis it does get to be quite difficult.

This is quite a good game, with reasonable graphics and it is fun to play, but not very addictive. An original version of what is now an unoriginal game. For what it's worth, your little man resembles Morph off the TV - at least my cousin thinks so.

The animation of your man is good, but there's not much to the game really. It works on the attrition principle of just wearing you down by numbers. A better arrangement of keys would have helped too; the cursors never function well with fingers. Quite good sound; I would think a good, tough game for younger age groups in preparation for alien-zapping.

Another maze game where each maze represents (at a guess) a floor in a haunted hotel. The aim is to tear around picking up the four sections of a key, and assembling them while avoiding the evil spirits. This done, the player can move on to a harder level with more sprites.

John: This game has a highly original theme but looks rather like Pacman without the dots. The graphics are extremely good, with Happing bats and a skeleton with a funny walk. 7/10

Tony: Instructions were a little scarce, screen layout is exceptional but there could have been a greater variety of monsters in a 48K program. 8/10

Mark: The speed of this game is just about right and colour has been used to good effect, enhancing the well-defined graphics. It also includes a very nice loading display. 8/10

Producer: Phipps Associates, 48K
£5.95 (2)

This verges on being a 'Pac Man' variant, but not quite. The idea is that you are spending the night in a strange house full of unpleasant monsters. Fortunately you are wise to the lore and know that if you can get the four sections of a cross from the four corners of the floor to the central room you will destroy the power of the monsters. Each screen is the same maze with a square in the middle and four 'L' shaped pieces which you must collect one at a time and take to the centre. When the cross is formed the monsters die and you progress to the next, more difficult level with more nasties. The game offers reasonable graphics and is simple to play. Not very addictive, not even very serious but it may appeal to younger players and is certainly fun between alien-zapping. Poor keys (Cursors). Joystick: Kempston, average. CRASH overal rating 59% M/C.

SLEEP IN WOLF'S CLOTHING

MAKER: Phipps Associates
MACHINE: Spectrum 48K
FORMAT: cassette
PRICE: £5.95

Say it in a theatrical whisper: House of the Living Dead! Isn't it wonderful! It's the sort of title that conjures up all manner of gross George (Dawn of the Dead) Romero-type imagery. Unfortunately those expecting buckets of arcade blood in the gruesome manner of Forbidden Forest or Orc Attack are in for a disappointment. This is a fun but innocuous (U certificate) maze game in which power pills and ghosts have been replaced by bats and skeletons.

You must collect a segmented holy cross from each corner of the maze and return to the crypt at the centre of the screen. This is simple enough at first as you've only a single bat to contend with, but clear enough screens and you're confronted by hordes of rattling skeletons and dismembered hands (EEK).

The animation is effective and the soundtrack, namely a jovial rendition of the death march, nothing if not appropriate. It's quite a change of pace from Phipps' renowned adventures and an entertaining alternative to the dread Pac-Man.

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K
JOYSTICK: Kempston, Optional
SUPPLIER: Phipps Associates
PRICE: £5.95

The House of the Living Dead is cut off from the outside world by swamp and woods, but the game turns out to be just another maze chase. The object is to collect four parts of a cross, each at a corner of a storey of the house.

Take each part in turn to the centre of the floor, avoiding evil creatures such as bats, skeletons and moving hands. As soon as the cross is assembled. Its divine power destroys the nasties and you graduate to the next floor.

On the first floor, there's just one nasty, on the second two, etc.

House of the Living Dead has clear graphics and eerie sound effects. The idea, however, could have been developed further for example, a variety of floorplans instead done.

The scoring system works strangely as well, more points being given the longer you stay on the floor. A decreasing time bonus would have encouraged speed and increased the challenge.