Producer: Level 9 Computing
Retail Price: £9.95

The Silicon Dream Trilogy consists of Snowball, Return to Eden and the yet to be released The Worm in Paradise. This, the second adventure in the trilogy, starts where Snowball left off, and has been written using Level 9's ever increasing library of compression techniques to give a full-bodied, more complete narrative with about 250 locations and 240 pictures. As with Artic, Level 9 have deemed that all truly commercial adventures must accommodate graphics from now on, and I am pleased to report that in this particular case the graphics, far from being a distraction, actually add to the quality and flavour of the game. The locations are exotic and the scenes psychedelic.

If Level 9 have a boffin image they've done themselves no harm with their latest technological breakthrough, the type-ahead. This idea allows you to carry on typing commands even when the program isn't ready for them, so you can type a whole series of short instructions and then watch as the program carries them out. Recent notoriety and fame have not ruined a cottage industry; Level 9 still provide clue sheet forms with each 'Welcome to Eden' booklet.

Snowball 9 carries two million sleeping colonists to Eden, the only habitable planet in the Eriadni A binary starsystem. Eden's plant life is legendary and was probably seeded by long-vanished aliens. City building on the planet at first went well but problems developed as the myriad plants and cunning creatures adapted to fight bask. Robots have been making all important decisions since the late 2100s and run the colonisation program. Within a wall built to protect the city, the robots work ceaselessly to perfect the environment for its fragile and vulnerable human colonists. The city still looks new but impressions are misleading; its foundations are broken by a million root cracks and vermin infest the lower levels. What may be worse, the robot army has been fighting too long.

You play Kim Kimberley who has just saved the interstellar transport, Snowball 9, from disaster. Unfortunately the control room vidcoms show how you enter and hurl a bomb engulfing the room in flames. The resulting trial finds you guilty and you are summarily sentenced to death. The waldroids close in and, rather than stay to argue your case, you think it wiser to flee in the stratoglider lifeboat to become the first human to land on the planet Eden. Crewed by people who think you are a murderer, Snowball 9 orbits far above you. But alas, the interstellar transport itself is in danger, as it has entered orbit off schedule and, due to damage, ignores all attempts at radio contact. The robots on the planet below, unable to chance a hostile presence in orbit, are wary...

Playing the game is made all the easier by Level 9's type-ahead, sure-footed input and friendly vocabulary, Including WEAR which has you wearing clothing without first having to GET it, an A(GAIN) command which repeats the last entry, and another innovation - IT to mean the previous specified object, eg. LIGHT LAMP, then MINE IT. The redefined character set gives a futuristic flavour (as does, of course, the myriad technological artifacts - vidcoms, traddads, skyhooks) but it can be difficult to read when more than one Level 9 fanatic crowds around a small TV screen. Could this be the beginning of the monitor boom? I won't say too much concerning the plot itself having given away too much of Snowball in the CRASH July issue, well worth checking up if you're interested in how the trilogy began (and for some appallingly heavy-handed clues). Let me just say this of the game, it isn't just the graphics which are peculiar and psychedelic.

Return to Eden is a very worthy successor to the highly acclaimed Snowball. Far from being just another follow up, it is a new and exciting program in its own right and has many features which keep Level 9 at the top of intelligent science fiction computer exploration.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: very difficult
Graphics: most locations and very good
Presentation: quite good, but a little cramped
Input facility: good, even with graphics
Response: good
Special features: type-ahead

SNOWBOUND IN EDEN

Memory: 48K
Price: £9.95

Down to earth at last, Kim Kimberley, secret agent extraordinaire and saviour of the starship Snowball, has been framed for an act of sabotage. Fleeing the wrath of the woken colonists she steals a stratoglider and enters the atmosphere of Eden, the Snowball's destination. Condemned to death she has only a short time to hide in the luxuriant and bizarre undergrowth of the planet. The ship need only turn its engines towards her to fry her to a crisp.

So begins Return to Eden, another brain scrambling adventure from Level 9 and sequel to Snowball. The presentation has changed - the game includes location graphics, yellow word display on a black background and 'write ahead'. That feature allows you to input text in a continuous flow without waiting for the cursor to reappear.

There are around 250 locations and Level 9 claims that the use of graphics has not adversely affected the amount of description or the general quality. Initial exploration seems to back that up. If you find the graphics too slow they can be switched out.

Once safe in the jungle you must head out for the robot-manned city in the east. You must survive amongst the beautiful but lethal flora and fauna and avoid the robot devices which protect the city.

Problems and puzzles abound; this is a world unknown to humans and many plants or creatures have odd properties. Just trying to survive ten minutes is difficult - Level 9 keep rolling those heavy dice on you but give you a few resurrections before finishing you off.

Exhausted compulsives of the firm's other works may just as well admit to themselves now that they probably won't be sleeping much for the next few months. Atmospheric and original.

Well, I'm glad I'm not really Kim Kimberley! After all that trouble saving the Snowball from certain doom, what thanks does it get? I say "it" because Kim is a bit of a unisex type, designed, presumably, so that everybody can identify with her. Could be that very few will - know what I mean?

But I digress. After all that trouble saving the Snowball, overcoming waldroids, nightingales and the rest, the colonists aboard repay her by finding her guilty of murder! So there she is, on Eden, having escaped in a Stratoglider and no means of protecting herself against the wrath of the ungrateful colonists! Snowball will take its revenge, blasting its engines towards the "it-type" Kim.

That, course, is our first problem. Then you must save the planet Eden from the robots who have made it habitable and are now doing their own thing!

This is the first Level 9 game under their own label that has graphics. I wish it wasn't, for on the Spectrum version that I played, they did nothing to enhance the game. They certainly didn't reach the standard of the graphics in Erik the Viking, although they are just as fast in displaying.

I was soon typing "words" - the command that turns them off. I wasn't altogether impressed with the text either - not the content, but the appearance. Level 9 has created their own character set in the image of those computer-readable characters you see at the bottom of cheques. I found them rather painful to read.

So it was with relief that I turned to the Commodore version. In this, the graphics are quicker to display, more attractive and have a "wide screen" look in contrast with the Spectrums "square screen" pictures. In addition, the text hadn't been messed around and was far more readable!

Once out of danger from the Snowball, your journey takes you through the countryside, with its alien flora and fauna, to save Eden from its robots who have gone slightly bananas. From that, you will probably guess that I haven't yet got very far into the game - you are right! But would you have wanted to wait another couple of months to read about the game??

Return from Eden is littered with new trendy words from Level 9's imaginative but self-explanatory sci-fi vocabulary, such as Tradclads, the (unisex?) costume you find yourself wearing. There are also a number of random messages that tend to get a bit tedious at times, such as "a helicopter gunship clatters overhead". Predictably, perhaps, I would have preferred graphics and more variety of text, as even the Commodore graphics do little to enhance the game.

For some reason, nearly everyone has gone off the idea of releasing text-only Adventures any more. This is a pity in the case of Level 9, for they built their excellent reputation on text Adventures. So it seems purist text adventurers must suffer to accommodate sales-intensive casual buyer who is to be lured by pretty pictures.

Nevertheless, Return to Eden is of a high standard and will, I think, turn out to have the same depth as its forerunner, Snowball.

Return to Eden is available for a wide range of machines and is published by Level 9 Computing at £9.95.

MACHINE: Spectrum, Amstrad, Atari, BBC, CBM 64, Nascom, Memotech
PRICE: £9.95

First. however, let's Return to Eden with Level 9. This is the eagerly-awaited sequel to Snowball and will be available on the usual extensive Level 9 range of machines, from the Memotech right through to the Amstrad. You don't, by the way, need to have played Snowball to enjoy Return To Eden.

This game marks a radical departure from Level 9 tradition by including gasp - GRAPHICS. Have the die hard, text-only gents from L9 taken leave of their senses?? No, mein wizardlings, zay haf zimply produced a better game, ja! (Yes, the White Wizard is proficient in all languages including Numenorean Provincial).

Frankly, the White Wizard found Snowball a very trying game and wore out at least a dozen wands exploring its secrets. Return to Eden is rather easier in my opinion and certainly as enjoyable as its predecessor.

The only thing about the graphics is that some of them are rather poor... Sacrilege, I know, to speak ill of a Level 9 game but really they aren't that hot with the pastels. Even the old Mysterious Adventure range comes out on top here.

However, this game oozes with atmosphere as you explore a distant planet populated by some very strange creatures, including the invaluable See Bee, the very necessary Ouija bird, and the undesirable leviathan. You can jump off cliffs, fight squirrels (well, be attacked by squirrels), and die of radiation. This is the sort of thing Wizards enjoy mid that's only the beginning.

From the exotic forest you move on to the daunting task of penetrating the different zones surrounding a robot constructed city. Very hazardous this, and I guarantee you'll need to spend at least a week driving yourself round the bend before you reach the city - by which time you'll be only about halfway through the game!

200 locations, the usual extensive vocabulary, and a great scenario make this every bit as good as previous Level 9 games. Don't expect the locations to he quite so fully described as other Level 9 games - after all you do get the graphics which take up a lot of memory.

There's a strong 'conservationist' slant to the story, centring on the moral questions surrounding the destruction of alien life forms. No, I'm not kidding, and the White Wizard very much approves of this sort of thing. The more adventures we have that reflect real-life problems like this the better in my view.

The only slight reservation I have about Return to Eden (and all other Level 9 games) is that it doesn't tell you which words it fails to understand it simply replies with the famous 'Arfle Barfle Gloop?' which isn't much help when you're trying to unravel vocabulary problems. It has to be said, however, that one doesn't often have vocabulary problems in a Level 9 game.

GAME TYPE: Adventure

Where game enthusiasts are bound to have tales of dangerous and inescapable situations in which they have been caught. The plight of Kim Kimberley in Return to Eden must win some sort of prize for being absolutely the worst situation in which anybody could find themselves. Even if we forget that Kim has just emerged from the earlier Level 9 adventure Snowball, and if we take into account that if we were Kim we would be able to see around us and thus avoid trying eight directions and in, out, up and down in all locations, the situation does not improve.

There Kim is, unprotected, in the wreckage of a stratoglider lifeboat. In a limited amount of time a spaceship's rockets will be turned on Kim, and she has no hope of survival unless she can overcome two puzzles, untangle a maze and find one specific location before the rockets are switched on. If this game was for real, Kim would probably be fried while exploring the lifeboat.

Level Nine adventures are always outstanding, and Return to Eden is a joy to play. Quickly-drawn pictures are optional, and it is possible to change from text-only adventure to text and graphics at any point. All input receives a sensible answer, and it is by no means always the same answer. Even pressing every key, one after another, while not producing the same useful results as this did in Snowball, will elicit a wide variety of responses.

Perhaps most user-friendly of all is the program's text acceptance. On most adventures the program will deal with one piece of text, ponder it at length, and then print a response. If you have already started typing your next move, only half of it will appear and this must either be edited or entered. Return from Eden will deal with an enormous number of phrases at one time. Typing in eleven instructions in close succession will not confuse it at all.

An excellent, user-friendly, fiendishly difficult adventure, Return to Eden is produced by Level 9 computing.

Various
£9.95
Level 9

This is Level 9's sequel to the smash-hit Snowball. As ever with this company's adventures, the plot is exciting, the prose detailed and imaginative, the locations numerous - over 250 - and the adventure awash with stimulating puzzles.

Forced by damning evidence to flee from the interstar transport Snowball 9, Kim Kimberley is the first human to land on the Planet Eden. However, Eden is not uninhabited but populated by robots who live in an eastern city which is constantly under attack from hostile beings of all types. Will the good name of Kim Kimberley be cleared? Will Kim even survive? Play on!

For the first time, Level 9 have included graphics but only if you've got a Commodore 64, Spectrum or Amstrad. For the rest it's text only, though the BBC B version has a separate program displaying the picture. Not being a company to stint on quality or quantity, they have crammed in about 240 first rate and fast drawn pictures. If you buy no other adventure, you must buy this - Level 9 have come up trumps again.

The second in the Silicon Dreams trilogy, Return to Eden takes off where Snowball finished, finding heroine Kim Kimberley lost on a planet overrun with lethal plant life and rogue robots.

Displaying all the hallmarks of Level 9 - intricate plotting, fine attention to detail, atmospheric scene-setting, and brain scrambling problems - Return to Eden also features graphics for each of the 250 locations, created using a compressor technique written by author Pete Austin.

When the third part, Worm in Paradise, is released, Level 9 will have completed what is, to date, the only serious amalgam of computer adventure and science fiction.