Producer: Top Ten
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: Colin Jordan

A professional cover bounds this cassette's worth of frivolity, with some of the smallest writing you could get on an inlay forming the instructions. But you'll need guidance - this isn't the straightforward affair it first appears.

Inspector Flukeit features conversations between characters - interrogations, as once again you take the role of investigator. The character interactions boil down to little more than chalking up some everyday banter or directly asking a character to hand over something you want to examine, but don't write the game off as a con trick; considering it's a cheap game, it's surprising how often it comes up with clever retorts to your input. And a REPEAT LAST COMMAND button shows some of the refinement in its programming.

As the eponymous Inspector Flukeit, you're called into solve the mysterious disappearance of the brilliant Professor Mundle. You are ably assisted by your sidekick, Blunders, who is accident-prone but a helpful sort of chap. Together you must track down clues, interrogate suspects, and finally hand over the perpetrators of the ghastly crime. Blunders is your chief ally, reflected in the instructions with this set displayed prominently: SAY TO BLUNDERS, ASK BLUNDERS, TELL BLUNDERS, BLUNDERS! After a while you wonder if the chap is misnamed, as he becomes almost dependably useful.

Other characters around the professor's Radley Mansion, including the porter, maid and gardener, might prove useful, though the diary found in the library gave me the easiest advance. And when the going is rough, a well-timed examination of the surroundings often smooths the way. Failing that, the adventure has a VERBS command which brings up some of the useful verbs allowed.

If it's the unresponsive characters giving you a hard time (they often daydream while you're talking to them, missing everything you say, or just gaze at you with a funny look), perhaps they'd like something from you to put their minds at ease and allow you to probe more deeply...

I've left the bad news about this game till last. This flaw was so bad that I almost gave up playing Inspector Flukeit before I got into it. The game, commendably, is written around the author's own system (termed 'Worldscape') but, as so often with homemade systems, the input routine is dodgy, leaving you wallowing and bogged down in keys.

It's not the worst input system I've played, it's just a little slow - and there's no beep on inputting each letter, which makes it all the more uncertain. The dropping of the usual input cursor is disorienting, and the game itself is very slow and ponderous, a reminder of BASIC days.

There aren't many pictures, and those that do pop up - to scroll quickly off again - are not of a high quality. And the look and feel of the screen is somewhat Hobbit-like, right down to the omnipresent WAIT marching roughshod over everything.

Inspector Flukeit is a terribly slow program and might test the patience of some, but for those who persevere there's a super little detective story just waiting to be discovered.

It's one of the first releases on the Top Ten label, which launched in June.

DIFFICULTY: use VERBS command and all should flow fine
GRAPHICS: sparse and simple
PRESENTATION: average
INPUT FACILITY: beyond verb/noun
RESPONSE: S-L-O-W

FAX BOX
Game: Inspector Flukeit
Publisher: Top Ten Hits, MIL, 2 Chiltern Enterprise Centre, Station Rd, Theale, Berks RG7 4AA
Price: £1.99

Mixed feelings about this detective game. It go off to a poor start but began to warm up a bit, though I've a feeling it won't take too long to polish off. The poor start? The very slow keyboard response and almost equally slow program response, so be prepared to do a lot of typing a l-e-t-t-e-r a-t a t-i-m-e l-i-k-e t-h-i-s.

Still, nice to see a game written by someone with his own adventure system, the someone being Colin Jordan, his system being called 'WorldsCape'. The game looks like a cross between Hobbit and Urban Upstart, the nice Character set being very Hobbit-like, and several of the responses and location descriptions reminded me of it.

Not that the story's remotely similar. You play the part of Frank Flukeit, a private investigator, and you and your accident-prone assistant, Blunders, must solve the mysterious disappearance of Professor Mundle, or Proffessor Mundle as the program spells him all the way through. Blunders adds another Hobbit-like touch, but instead of sitting down and singing about gold he keeps bumping into things and cursing to himself.

I was quite impressed by the 'Worldscape' system, which allows other characters to wander around, and allows you to talk to them in a variety of ways, and I've a feeling we'll see a much better adventure than this one written on it soon. Not that there's too much wrong with Flukeit as the marks indicate, though the graphics are pretty poor. Some of the problems are tedious rather than true teasers (so to speak), like at the beginning of the game when you crash the car and die if you try to drive it, but survive if you ask Blunders to read the map and do the driving for you. Unless you were miraculously able to swop seats after you'd got into the car, that's just a bit silly.

When you arrive at Radley Mansion there's plenty of exploring to do, heed the advice of the instructions and make a note of everything you're told otherwise you'll never get to the Mansion in the first place. Despite the arrival of two complete strangers in what's a new room to me, a 'kithchen', the cook goes about her business but be careful not to upset her as she'll suddenly clobber you senseless if you do, another complaint in a game with no RAM SAVE feature. Use the SAVE to tape option regularly. There's a b***** of a maze in the garden, where exits are changed - as you'll discover if you drop things to try to help you map it, and another drawback is that you have to type LOOK at each location when you revisit otherwise you only get a brief description which omits to remind you about things like trunks and suits of armour that are there.

Other than that, the problems kept me playing, there's much to enjoy, and I've a feeling this'll keep you occupied for a couple of evenings or so and you'll feel you've got your two quid's worth at the end of it.