Producer: The Power House
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: Craig Davies

The Power House budget label is new to adventures. Their inlays come complete with programmer profiles and mug shots (Craig Davies, rather knowingly, has dark specs on), and a Power Mouse whose body is composed of a hair dryer atop the innards of a vacuum cleaner.

Completing the design are two potato heads who say 'Yowzer! Brilltoid! All music by House Electronic Xperience'. And you could use such words to describe Custerds Quest - for the paltry price it certainly is a super jocular jaunt through the idiosyncrasies of adventure. Many adventure conventions and quirks get the Craig Davies treatment in a thoroughly enjoyable way.

Sir Coward de Custerd is the name, and I'm not quite sure what's the game, but I do know that much can be achieved in this adventure - the humour is in the feel of the gameplay and doesn't seriously affect the outcome.

The opening scene sets you in the Great Ancestral Hall of Castle Custerd. There are about 15 locations in the castle itself, where you can pick up the essentials for any knight, and countless sites beyond which even include a subadventure opening out beyond a bedroom cupboard! in this area, as in so much of the adventure, the subtle writing style and competence of the prompts and EXAMINE reports give the game a winning edge.

For those who enjoy simpler distractions, the pictures aren't bad for a budget adventure, and they're drawn reasonably quickly. In the text, also, there's good use of coloured highlights to break up the blocks of print in a most attractive manner.

As always with funnies, giving too many examples might lessen the impact of the game - so let's just look at a few small clips from Custerds Quest.

In the castle there's a storeroom with an Inconsequential Stone Panel. EXAM PANEL, of course, gives 'It's inconsequential! Can't you read? Or perhaps it's because you can't understand the meaning of the word but ploughed on relentlessly? Anyway it's a floor panel. Why not give it a kick?'.

Getting into the swing of the adventure, you naturally give it a kick, which results in the following funny: 'You give the panel a hefty kick which shatters a few toes. You do a dance around the room with your foot held in your hand uttering curses which would shock your granny. You really are too gullable! Alright, try tapping it.'

With wary cynicism you now tap the so-called Inconsequential Panel: 'You start tapping. Time drags on. Various cuddly woodland animals gather at the door, watching you intently as your face plunges into deeper shades of crimson. Suddenly and without warning, the panel opens and you fall head first into the room below.'

And there's a classic joke if you return later and try to skip a stage by going direct to TAP PANEL. This gives: 'Rule 186:f. The player must first kick the panel before tapping it.' it shows an empathy with the travails of the weary adventurer, worn down by too many long-winded solution pathways in unfriendly games.

Custerds Quest is a very funny and sharp-humoured game, deriving great pleasure from taking every adventure etiquette and turning it on its head for the amusement of the jaded adventurer. For my money this is better than many others that have attempted the same kind of lampooning; Custerds Quest is exceptionally well-written in an engagingly chatty, witty style. Super stuff.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: informative prompts make the going easy
Graphics: quite good
Presentation: neat
Input Facility: verb/noun
Response: fast Quill response

FAX BOX
Game: Custerd's Quest
Publisher: The Power House
Price: £1.99

Having taken a dislike to the title, I decided I wasn't going to like this new adventure from Craig Davies, alias Bodkin Software, which is being published by The Power House, formerly known as Alpha Omega, alias CRL. An appropriately silly arrangement for a silly adventure, I thought. But I loved it and I actually laughed out loud in several places - and that doesn't happen too often in adventure playing, let's be honest.

You take the part of Sir Coward de Custerd (groan) and you're lumbered with the job of journeying to the home of the evil necromancer, Tower Doom, and sorting him out as he's polluting the land causing chaos and stuff like that. You begin in the Great Hall of your ancestral home, Castle Custerd, and a quick look at the tatty curtains reveals that it maybe isn't quite so great after all. To the west is a chest in the master bedroom, and closer examination reveals this to be the mysterious chest that crops up in all the best adventures. And locked, of course. To the east is the kitchen, with something unpleasant on the walls, while elsewhere is a pig sty with something even more unpleasant on the floor. And you're standing in it.

Soon you'll also be standing outside a small brick building. Sounds familiar? Don't be too sure as the programmer assures us there's no spring inside, though inside a store room is an inconsequential stone panel. This leads to an amusing sequence of inevitable inputs in the style much favoured by Delta 4 of late, and Custerd's Quest does display a lot of the humour we've come to associate with Mr McNeill and the St Brides team. Go down through the stone panel and you'll see what I mean. I didn't even mind dying when I fell foul of the dreaded moat monster as the death routine had a nice touch of originality about it.

A good start for Power House budget adventures. More please. And more power to the elbow and other bits of Craig Davies for an amusing spoof adventure.

Label: Power House
Author: Craig Richard Davies
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Jerry Muir

The word is whacky. Author Craig Richard Davies has taken a leaf out of the Fergus McNeill book and Quill-ed with his tongue firmly into his cheek, which means that Custerd's Quest is a rich trifle of satirical references to all those cliches that give adventurers such feelings of deja vu.

Actually this sort of spoof on the land of trolls, castles and missing keys isn't quite so novel as it used to be, but Custerd avoids getting egg on its face thanks to some fairly full descriptions and a number of witty responses.

None of the puzzles are too difficult, but the humour is suitably silly and should raise the odd smile. There are also occasional illustrations, which are kept simple enough to appear with only the briefest delay.

Custerd isn't likely to win any awards for originality and the inlay fails to credit the Quill or explain how to use the Ramsave. But for a budget bash at some well-heeled conventions it offers a few chuckles, even if it is lacking in the belly-laugh department.