Producer: Gilsoft
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £5.95
Language: Machine code
Author: Colin Smith

"I am in a grim prison cell. A barred window is to the NORTH and a rusting but strong cell door is to the EAST." Thus starts Devil's Island, a Quill-written text adventure from Gilsoft's Gold Collection. That's about all the plot explanation you'll get despite the references on the first intro screen that full instructions are on the cassette inlay. But where? That minor quibble apart, the adventure is a regular Quill one, with instant text response and straightforward, clear and interesting descriptions.

Starting off in a cell on Devil's Island makes your aim quite clear - escape. For those who know it not, Devil's Island is the infamous French prison island set in the tropics. The heavily guarded prison was surrounded by dense, killing jungle, unfriendly natives - just the sort of place invented especially for adventure games.

COMMENTS

Responses: instant

Starting this game is a bit like waking in the morning and finding that the nightmare isn't over - you really are a wretched captive. But this prison reminds me more of Patrick McGoohan's 'The Prisoner' series. It all seems set up to let you escape a little bit. I thought eating a tasty pie was a good thing On adventure terms - keeps your stamina up and so on) but little did I realise that it would make me too fat to squeeze through the . . . Colin Smith has a nasty sense of humour and must be the sort of person who enjoys pulling flies' wings off before eating his breakfast. Great stuff.

An exceedingly well-plotted adventure this, with well-planted red herrings to keep you running around in circles for ages - well not realty, because you quickly get shot by the trigger-happy guards. Once I got the hang of it, though, I neatly disposed of my guards and escaped into the jungle in a super smooth Mission Impossible way. But that was just the beginning, and I'm still on this rotten jungle island.

One of those games that goes to prove you don't need pictures to liven up adventures. The text is alive enough to flash up pictures in your mind's eye anyway. A classic escape game (I didn't make it - not yet anyway) but I shall try many times more. It's nice to see that relatively simple games like this, without artificial intelligence or elaborate Inglish or interactive characters who wander in and out of their own accord, can still be so engrossing. I should think this would be a good adventure even for beginners as long as they can get past hurdles like waste chutes, iron bars and searchlights. Keep trying - there are ways and means ...

Devil's island is one of the new breed of Spectrum Adventures written with the aid of The Quill. It comes from Gilsoft and was designed by Cohn Smith.

Using The Quill, an Adventure is not written directly as program code, so the author needs no knowledge of programming. In theory this means that anyone with imagination should be able to design a challenging Adventure, without the need to learn programming skills.

In practice, things don't seem to be working out this way - perhaps because imagination is, in any case, a prerequisite for a programmer.

To start with, I found it an Adventure in itself just to load the game - it took me seven attempts to get the volume set correctly. Once the program starts to load, a picture is drawn of a skull hanging over the prison on Devil's Island, setting an ominous tone.

The main aim is for the player to escape from the infamous prison complex alive. Not an easy task. The game's instructions do not help either as, when the game has loaded, it refers to the cassette inlay for extra information. This could have been useful had it been there!

So with the barest knowledge of my mission, I set off to escape from where so many had died. I was in a little cell, with few things of interest to be seen - just a washbasin, bed and door. The washbasin seemed to be there only to enhance the realism of the game - but I could be wrong!

Once out of the cell, problems really start to mount up. There are two guards to the north and one to the south, in the cookhouse. The latter must be disposed of, but I'll leave you to find how!

Opposite your cell, a fellow prisoner stares through a peephole at you from his cell. It is my guess that I will need to enlist the help of other prisoners in making my escape. At present, I have reached the courtyard and am trying to avoid being shot every time I attempt to return.

My one major gripe is that the HELP command is no help at all. "Try drawing a map and using different words," it says!

Apart from this little annoying feature, Devil's Island has turned out to be the best game I have seen written with The Quill. This, though, does not make it a great game. I rate it as just a little better than average amongst the dross that is available for the Spectrum.

Devil's Island is one of the Gilsoft Golden Collection for 48k Spectrum, priced £5.95.

MAKER: Gilsoft
MACHINE: 48K Spectrum
PRICE: £5.95

Devil's Island also appears to crib heavily from the Quill manual. Indeed the first location almost duplicates the utility's built in example! However such cheek is forgiven as it quickly becomes obvious that author Colin Smith has crafted an ingenious and devious adventure here. You begin incarcerated in some dark dank cell on the legendary penal colony and must gamely break jail and bid for freedom through the treacherous tropical rain forest. Neatly scripted with some humorous asides and ferocious puzzles, Island threatens to become a major headache. It appears to be the toughest adventure in the collection.

'OW YOU SAY - "ESCAPE?"'

MAKER: Gilsoft
MACHINE: Spectrum
FORMAT: cassette
PRICE: £5.95

This promising text adventure was written using The Quill (reviewed in BIG K No. 2) and is one of a series released by Gilsoft to promote their adventure game editor.

Following a mood-setting loading screen, I found myself in a sparse cell inside a prison fortress from which I had to escape and make my way across a hostile island to safety. Escaping from the prison took a while, but once free I explored a reasonably large area of the island, negotiating deadly wildlife and a tribe of cannibals, amongst other perils. However, after the rigors of escaping prison, most of the jungle's dangers were - with reasonable care - readily overcome.

With much careful work evident in the adventure, I hope there are some real problems ahead. The well-written descriptions create a good sense of atmosphere and some excellent - often humourous - responses made Devil's Island worthwhile. Useful clues, as the guards gun you down for the Nth time, will help you get events in the correct (necessary) order, making up a little for an ineffectual help response. 'Look' doesn't mean the same as 'examine' (make sure you do) and be sure not to overlook the simple but obvious!