Producer: SCR Adventures
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £8.95
Language: Machine code
Author: Sheppard, Cummins & Richardson

The task in this text-only adventure, which is the first of a planned series of 'Artemis Quests', is to enter Castle Blackstar at the behest of a beautiful, mysterious woman glimpsed in a dream. There you must recover her power orb from the vast underground caverns. To achieve maximum points all treasures found must be cleaned of their evil, all puzzles solved and the orb returned to our dear lady, who is, of course, no less than a Goddess - Artemis. She promises to covertly help you during your quest. The maximum score is 240 and, if successful, you may keep all the loot!

A note in the accompanying 8-page booklet says that the driver software for Castle Blackstar is based extensively on the Adven-80 program developed by Peter Scargill.

COMMENTS

Graphics: text only, very simple, black letters on white ground, clear and easy to read

As a text-only adventure amongst the new wave of graphic adventures, Castle Blackstar manages to hold its own very well. The location descriptions are nice, detailed and manage to create atmosphere in simple terms very well. The computer's replies to one's more nonsensical commands have a good touch of humour, and with fast machine code response this works very entertainingly.

I quickly found the castle at the beginning of the quest, but having strayed two moves away from it into the forest, I found the compass directions magically faded and I couldn't get back. Twenty steps later I was still stumbling blindly through thick forest. 'Climb Tree' to get a better view only elicited the response that such a dangerous undertaking was useless and I wouldn't find anything up there anyway! Starting to think the forest was intended as a death trap, I suddenly came upon a Gingerbread House in a clearing - and that was a death hole - three moves later I'd been turned into a wriggling worm and ended up inside some bird's tummy! Great!

A good text adventure beats a mixed graphics/text one any day, and Castle Blackstar ranks with Artic's best. But SCR had better reconsider their pricing - £8.95 is way over the top for what they offer. Otherwise a great start for a new company and I look forward to Artemis Quest 2. Exploring the inside of the castle was great fun, and I was impressed that turning a winch in one room actually operated something four or five locations away without my even knowing it until later when my apparently meaningless activity proved valuable! Beware of the fierce musical eagles (neat), and I hope you have more luck than me in getting a source of light to set about exploring the dark lower regions (sorry, Artemis, let you down there .) Great game, pity about the price.

Producer: CDS Micro Systems
Retail Price: £6.95
Language: Machine code
Author: Mike Sheppard

Castle Blackstar was reviewed in the March issue of CRASH but appears here under the auspices of Adventure Trail because it has been revamped and relaunched. The program I have is dated July 84, but this is version 9.9 and the truth is, it has battled its way through the vagaries of the marketplace for almost a year to settle in the pastures of CDS; it appears now as a fine piece of software, not dated at all, and in keeping with the finest text only traditions, with intelligent prose and consistent plot. It is set in that classic adventuring time zone of Prehistory, that is, even before the wireless brought you the Goon Show.

Let's have a look at what the cassette cover has to say and you'll see what I mean. 'Imagine... as you awaken from your sleep troubled by strange dreams and visions you find yourself in a luxurious room furnished in silver and glass. The ceiling is high and arched with a huge relief map of the moon hanging overhead... woman speaking to you. She is tall and willowy with hair like spun silver. She carries easily an air of authority and wisdom.' The relief map of the moon is explained by the fact that Artemis is the virgin goddess of the hunt and the moon, the twin sister of Apollo.

The objective of your quest is to return the power orb to Artemis but you can also score points through certain actions and by solving the many puzzles and finding the treasures to be taken back to be cleansed of their evil. Clearly, sophisticated scoring, as used here, is much fairer and more interesting than some recent games that have even stooped to an increased score with every new location visited.

Press any key on loading and you are in a valley surrounded on three sides by forest and you'd be well advised to take the easy route to begin with, west along the valley, unless you like to start off with a maze (equivalent to starting the day with cracking the ice on a lake for your early morning dip). Sadly, being a reviewer, I thought it my lot to take the metaphorical plunge but when I grew tired of wandering, keying in QUIT resulted in a NEW program. Needless to say, I was not amused (the metaphorical cramps and almost drowning, arrgh!).

Along the dusty road, reading the keystone reveals the author and contributors which I found handy as there is no mention of them on the cover. West takes you to the infamous castle itself. If you are reading this review for clues, then I'm sorry, but it would be unethical for me to tell you how to get the drawbridge down - but yes, you're quite right, it is your first major problem. Kindly, the program does not impose a major impasse here for the eventual solution lies in the adjacent locations.

The descriptions are most evocative and the locations are the result of much prethought and careful design. As more and more of the story becomes known, the structure and intelligence behind the plot becomes gradually apparent. The rooms and halls of the castle are consistently real; living quarters, kitchen and dining room, ramparts and drawbridge are all where you might expect, and function in an authentic way.

The text forms a good narrative, and it is easy to visualise the castle as you move about it. Here is the description of the dining room: 'You are in a grand dining room with glorious decor and a huge chandelier. Above you is an overhanging gallery which overlooks the archway forming the west entrance. A somewhat less than inviting exit leads east.'

Vocabulary is good with few surprises. Simple commands such as ENTER, IN, OUT, UP and DOWN are widely accepted to enter all manner of buildings, facilitating quick and easy movement. Input goes a little beyond verb/noun with TAKE LAMP AND LIGHT IT and DROP SWORD AND LOOK while WEAR is a refinement of GET. Apart from SCORE and the inadvisable QUIT, the game features GOES which gives the number of turns taken so far; VERBOSE which gives the Full location description and QUIET which only gives the full text for new locations. N.E., S.E. etc, and UP and DOWN make the castle and the mazes that surround it lengthy explorations.

Castle Blackstar is a super text adventure where the thought and careful planning behind its inception are most evident. The game is clever and consistent, well-designed, well-presented and with many ingenious and logical problems. If they don't make them like this any more, then it will be a shame.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: Quite difficult
Graphics: None
Presentation: Good
Input Facility: Good
Response: Very fast

You wake in a strange room that's furnished with silver and glass: out of the windows you can see landscapes of staggering beauty. However, there's a tall woman telling you to go recover the Orb from Castle Blackstar, you may keep any treasures you find - once she has cleansed them from evil.

Andrew: One of the best text-only adventures around, featuring a medieval castle and many unexpected and hidden extras. HIT

Johnathan: If you go down to the woods today you'll get lost in this puzzling adventure. MISS

George: There's a feeling when playing this adventure that the programmers responsible had a great deal of fun writing it. There's something of a Smart Alec tone, but it's still fun, if frustrating, to play. HIT

Producer: SCR Adventures, 48K
£8.95 (3)
Author: Sheppard, Cummins & Richardson

A text-only adventure, and first of a planned series of Artemis Quests. The Goddess Artemis, glimpsed in a dream, bids you enter Castle Blackstar to recover her power orb from the vast underground caverns. To achieve maximum points all treasures found must be cleansed of their evil, all puzzles solved and the orb returned. Location descriptions are detailed and atmospheric and response times are machine code fast with a touch of humour. The development of cause and effect is pretty advanced with situations like the turning of a winch in one room, causing the raising of a chandelier in another far away. Perhaps the only drawback is the rather steep price in comparison to many other similar adventures, so a low rating on value or money, but overall a CRASH rating of 75%.

Memory: 48K
Price: £8.95

Attention all battle-weary adventurers. Once again the call has gone out for a real live hero to investigate the traps and treasure, monsters and magic of some dank, perversely unmappable castle in a forgotten corner of Fantasyland.

One ought to yawn, turn the lamp low, put out the griffin and go to bed, but for aficionados of secret chambers hedged about by impenetrable logic puzzles the delights of playing the game seemingly never flag.

If you were bored by the last fantasy adventure you played, Castle Blackstar is unlikely to excite you wildly. That said, the SCR team has produced a competent text-only adventure.

The computer accepts most of the usual commands and has a 200-word vocabulary.

A modest prize is offered to the first few adventurers to reach the bitter end and return the Orb of Artemis to its rightful place.

One welcome feature is the ease of movement round the castle and its environs. Andrew Cummins of SCR says most of the problems are accessible independently of each other, so there is no need to spend days beating your brains out on one problem before you proceed to the next.

The program is apparently the first in a series of related quests. It remains to be seen whether players have the stamina to keep up with the series but Castle Blackstar should keep the peculiar minds of adventure freaks hyperactive for a month or so at least.

A game you QUIT because you want to start afresh, but leaving you with the message "QUITTING GAME WITH XX POINTS" and leaves your computer locked up, is NOT friendly!

I always adopt the philosophy that when a player leaves any game entering END or QUIT, the computer should be returned to its normal state - not have to be disconnected before it is any use. And an Adventure requiring a reload for another try is not nice anyway.

OK, grizzling over - is the game any good? Surprisingly, after my bad start, and prejudiced as I had become against it, I found Castle Blackstar to be a very interesting adventure - certainly better than many available for the Spectrum.

The game is text only and the machine code program gives a fast response. It has a good plot, some reasonable puzzles and I felt happier with the simple black on white text than with many a lavishly illustrated multi-coloured game.

The objective, which is fully explained in the accompanying leaflet, is to recover an orb, rid it of its evil powers and collect treasure. Points are awarded for being clever and collecting things.

The map is big and colourfully described and the vocabulary is claimed to be in excess of 200 words. Nevertheless, I found plenty of words that weren't recognised; many of them being displayed before me at the time!

Adventurers, as well as always being friendly and helpful souls, seem to be more disposed to bad language than most and this game copes with the situation in an original way by providing a swearbox - a location which fines you one object before you can escape!

If you're going to say something nasty, make sure you have a redundant object in your possession first! I can proudly claim to have beaten the swear box with some particularly foul language, but I suppose as a journalist I should have a wide vocabulary. (Shut-up CampbellMary Whitehouse will try to have it banned if you're not careful!)

So there you have it - don't go down in the woods to play, don't quit, and watch your mouth! Castle Blackstar for 48k Spectrum is from SCR Adventures, priced £8.95. Versions for Dragon 32, Commodore 64 and Apple II are planned.

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K
SUPPLIER: SCR Adventures
PRICE: £8.95

But meanwhile you'll understand why I was so impressed with Castle Blackstar, a new Spectrum adventure from SCR Adventures.

This is a text-only game that forms the first part of a series, the Artemis Quests. Although currently only available on the Sinclair, these programs will shortly be available on other machines.

GRAND SCALE

Castle Blackstar is an adventure on a grand scale, in which your objective is to locate a 'power orb' in the castle dungeons and return it to your revered Goddess. On the way you have the chance to collect various treasures which will add to your score.

So far, nothing new. Where this program really scores is in the description of its locations and the large (200-word plus) vocabulary. As you explore the Castle and the caverns beneath it, you really do get a feel for the world into which you have fallen.

My only quibble with SCR's program is that it doesn't allow you to quit the game and re-start. If you enter 'Quit' the game crashes and you have to re-load. Another minor annoyance is that the program doesn't specify which word it is having trouble with when it rejects your inputs, but since the vocabulary is of a decent size this isn't too much of a disadvantage. The program accepts complex commands, and all words may be abbreviated to four letters, plus of course the usual N, S, E, W and so on.

The next game in the Artemis series, Pyramid of the Sun, should be in the shops this summer.

BLACKSTAR MAINTAINS TRADITION

MICRO: Spectrum 48K
PRICE: £8.95
FORMAT: Cassette
SUPPLIER: SCR Adventures, 190 Shelbourne Rd, Tottenham, London

The goddess Artemis has mislaid an important orb. She'd like you to go and look For it. As per union rules, anything else you can loot is yours to keep. Suddenly you find yourself in a wooded valley beside a dusty road.

This, in glorious black-onwhite, is the none-too-original beginning of Castle Blackstar, a traditional text adventure set in a familiar pseudo-medieval fantasy world. Not too promising at first sight, perhaps, but persevere because this is an excellent, absorbing, detailed and tough adventure.

The heart of a text adventure is the quality of descriptions and puzzles, and both are first-class in this, the first of the Artemis Quests. There are a few unfortunate spelling errors here and there, but not enough to detract from the rich and convincing atmosphere built up in the wild countryside, deserted castle, subterranean catacombs, underground lake and so on.

If purple prose turns you puce there is a useful command which switches out the full description of locations already visited, leaving only the name (Kitchen, South Tower for instance).

A large area can be explored with little difficulty, and many interesting things lie about unguarded. Working out what to do with them is another matter, though, and I found the solutions to problems not as hard to identify as what the problems actually were.

If you get killed, the goddess appears to revive you, but three resurrections seems to be her limit.

I was particularly impressed by the integration of some objects into the room descriptions themselves, not simply wheels which turn and buttons which press, but things you can get and take away. This helps increase the atmosphere substantially and makes it vital to read the descriptions carefully.

Castle Blackstar is well-documented and offers a query service as well as T-shirts for the first 50 finishers. It's a shame you have to reload every time you quit or expire, but I found loading quick and reliable, so this wasn't the problem it might have been. If you like traditional text adventures, this will do very nicely.

48K Spectrum
£8.95
SCR Adventures

For those who like their text adventures meaty, Castle Blackstar should prove toothsome fare. It is a complex, puzzle-rich quest that challenges you to score a maximum of 240 points which are gained by finding and returning treasures, performing certain actions and accomplishing the main objective of your mission - to find and return the lost orb to the Lady Artemis.

Your start your journey in the vale of Castle Blackstar. Wander too far from the path and you'll he lost in a forest maze. Experienced adventurers will be well aware that the best way to map out a maze is to drop objects along the way so make sure you find some before going on a forest jaunt.

There are plenty of intriguing and unusual objects and puzzles, many of which will undoubtedly have you reaching for the aspirins. As a small taste of what's in store, difficulties along your way include an invisible hand, eagle eggs and a water-logged boat.

Original and challenging puzzles, fast response, a comprehensive vocabulary and plenty of atmosphere make Castle Blackstar a worthy contender for your hard won gold.

MINDPLAY

Intrepid Adventurer Greg Turnbull continues his series of reviews for lovers of 'arcade-alternatives'.

This is the first in a series of 'Artemis quests' from SCR Adventures. It is a text-only, machine code program giving extremely fast response times. Essentially it is a medieval fantasy, similar in theme to 'Knight's Quest'. The object is to enter the castle and recover the power orb, located in the vast (no understatement) underground caves.

Maximum (240) points are awarded for collecting all the treasures, completing certain special tasks (by overcoming puzzles), and returning the orb to the Goddess. All the usual commands are understood from a comprehensive vocabulary of some 200 words (it uses approx. 40K of memory.) If you get frustrated at any point, don't be tempted to swear, as this will cost you one object! There are many nice, humorous touches along the way, as well as a few red-herrings.

The game is not in real-time, so you can sit back and think your way out of each situation .It isn't interactive either, so you can't go round talking to the few characters you occasionally meet. Single and four-letter strings are used. For example: I = inventory, L = look, SCOR = points so far, N, S, SW, NE, U, D, etc. Plus some new and interesting commands: 'GOES' for number of turns taken, 'VERBOSE' for full descriptions, and 'QUIET' for shorter text on each location. (Although I couldn't see that 'quiet' had any noticeable effect!) This feature is not usually seen on anything smaller than a disc-based program.

The description themselves are very long (they may even fill an entire screen), and certainly create the atmosphere appropriate to the game's period. Sadly there is no provision for a 'HELP' feature for those of us who get stuck easily. Thankfully 'QUIT', 'SAVE', and 'LOAD' are all supported. One feature I do like is that there are a number of possible ways around some of the problems. This means that you don't suddenly come to an impasse (akin to hitting a brick wall), as often happens in some other adventures.

One awkward point is that not all the available directions are displayed on the screen - you have to guess - and it's easy to forget to try all of the possible ways. There are many locations, so good mapping is essential (especially as there are numerous levels: castle; upper and lower levels, two towers, tunnels and caverns, plus the huge cave system.) Fortunately these are very accessible, so without having to solve too many problems you can easily get to see over 90 locations. This is very useful for the novice. However the puzzles are challenging enough to keep the hardened adventurer busy for quite some time (due to the fact that they were written by fellow adventure-player.)

Hidden in the game are a number of death-traps. Dark places are to be avoided for fear of very nasty Deodans, who appear to enjoy decapitating unwary players! Getting killed isn't necessarily the end of the game; you merely drop all objects at that location, lose some points, and very handily get reincarnated back at the start. Hint: Beware of the forest, without the objects needed to map it, and remember the lamps and oil can run out.

The program also contains some oblique references to various literary sources. For example: a pentagram and an Angel of Death from 'The Devil rides out', a sword in a stone from the 'Arthur' legends, and runes about Smaug on a Mithril knife from a certain well-known book! The manual is well-written, but doesn't give anything away. SCR can be contacted if you really get stuck; and if you're brilliant the first 50 to complete the quest get free "Castle Blackstar" T-shirts. Overall an excellent adventure, especially for the beginner. The next one in this series, 'Pyramid of the sun' is due out later this year. If it's as good as this one, it should certainly be worth playing.