FAX BOX
Title: Scapeghost
Publisher: Level 9, PO Box 39, Weston-Super-Mare, Avon BS24 9UR
Price: £19.95 +3; £14.95 tape versions
Reviewer: Mike Gerrard

As we now know, Scapeghost is going to be the last of the traditional adventures from Level 9. Not even Ingrid Bottomlow will be making her promised third appearance, so it's boo-hoo and tears all round. Pete Austin says sales have been falling with each successive release, which seems mad as the games have been getting better all the time! No doubt piracy has played its part, and anyone who's ever pirated a game can now be glad that at last they've seen the consequences.

But down from the pulpit and into the graveyard, where the action in this one takes place. You didn't think there was much action in a graveyard? Obviously you've never spent a night in one, or in this case three nights, one for each part of the adventure - November Graveyard, Haunted House and Poltergeist. You have to survive each night in order to get through to the next part, but you can also play them independently if you like.

Why are you in a graveyard? Well, you're about to be buried, that's why. Yes, you start this game as a stiff. You used to be a copper 'til you got involved in some drugs deal. You were betrayed to the drugs gang, and took the blame for your own death. Nasty stories abound, so you've got three nights in which to prove your innocence.

You'd do well to start this game several times before playing it for real. Each time you start use the FOLLOW command to latch on to different people attending your funeral. You'll hear and see some useful clues. One 'tec says "Well, that's one nosey snoop buried", so it sounds like there's more corruption here than in the West Midlands Fuzz force. You also learn something about the vault in the graveyard.

Sooner or later the lights will go out, day becomes night, and the other ghosts on the graveyard shift start to put in an appearance. Your spirit guide will be Joe Danby, who's in the next grave to you. He used to be landlord of the Pig And Whistle. He'll show you around, and introduce you to your other neighbours. You should pay great attention to what's said as you'll need all these chums on your side to succeed. It's a bit like the first part of Ingrid's Back, where you have to sort out their problems in order to recruit them to your cause. In fact, it's all very traditional Level 9 stuff, which is probably why the company bought the idea from Sandra Sharkey and Pete Gerrard (who he?) in the first place. Game design is by Pete Austin.

There's tons of enjoyable stuff in here, and they've dug up (geddit?) every graveyard joke they can. I can spot my brother's jokes a mile off - they're the ones that make you groan out loud. But we don't play adventures just to enjoy ourselves, do we? We want problems to solve, and Scapeghost has some good ones. First, when you think about it, is that, as a ghost, you can't pick anything up as it slips through your ghostly fingers. But if you work on it, you can slowly improve your strength and be able to pick up a petal, if not quite crush a grape, fairly soon. Mind you, you can't escape the dreadful jokes even when solving the problems, as you'll find out when you try to help lift the curse that's befallen Edith Dean. In fact you can solve this in more than one way - all of them involving dreadful puns!

So if it's all such jolly fun, why isn't this a Megagame? Well, it's got niggling faults which make it all seem like a bit of a rush job. It may be unfair to say it, but the feeling seems to be "Well, it's our last one anyway, so it doesn't matter". There are a few typing mistakes in the text. If you ask Joe Danby to do anything you are usually told "Joe agrees", but then you discover he hasn't actually done what you asked. I asked him to pick something up, which I couldn't manage (more experienced ghosts know about these things), and he agreed, so we wafted all the way over to the other side of the graveyard, I asked him to drop it and the silly spirit hadn't picked it up after all!

Not quite up there with the Level 9 classics, but you'll still be missing a lot if you don't buy it. So long, lads, and thanks for all the fun.

The last LEVEL 9 adventure... Good riddance, or sad farewell?

This is the last text/graphics adventure planned by Level 9 before they set to work with RPGs and their HUGE system (see page 19 of this issue) and as a swan song its not at all bad. How many times have you played the part of a ghost, barely able to lift a piece of thistledown, never mind tackle a hardened criminal? To succeed in Scapeghost you must forget about brute force and rely instead on your wits.

Infiltrating a drugs gang has its hazards as you, policeman Alan Chance, have discovered. Someone or something alerted the gang and as a result they rubbed you out, escaping with your colleague Sarah as a hostage. Unfortunately. this heroic self-sacrifice doesn't seem to have gone down well with the Force, on the contrary, they seem to believe that you were in with the gang and have branded you a traitor - this you discover when you materialise, as a ghost, watching your own funeral. You now have only three nights to clear your name and gain revenge.

After the mourners have left your first task is to build up your strength while persuading your neighbours in this des-res to help you in your task. However the other ghosts are rather a surly lot - well, wouldn't you be if you'd spent the last few years in a damp, dark cemetery? - so you'll need to discover what makes them tick and cheer up their gloomy lives before they'll be of much use. This 'do-goody' scenario seems to be a typical Level 9 hallmark nowadays, after Ingrid's attempts at 'cheering people up' in previous games.

Without giving away too much of the plot, the game is split into three sections, one for each night. The first night is spent developing your ghostly powers and working out a way to foil the gang's criminal plans. On the second night you must attempt to alert the police as to the present whereabouts of the criminals, while the third night is spent rescuing Sarah and preventing the gang from destroying the evidence.

Presentation is up to the normal Level 9 standards with atmospherically detailed graphics (which can be moved up and down the screen or switched off altogether if you prefer) complementing good descriptive text descriptions and a fairly comprehensive parser.

Responses are nicely creepy at times and occasionally the game presents you with excruciating puns on the ghostly theme. I found that these little asides did much to dispell the scarier implications of the plot without detracting from the atmosphere too much. It is, however, open to question just how horrific a game can be anyway - see the horror article this month on page 35. If the man who plays Freddy Krueger thinks games can't cut the mustard in a suitably gory fashion then who am I to disagree? On the other hand, I can't help feeling that he never played Lurking Horror...

If you're used to object oriented adventures you'll find Scapeghost quite a challenge. Lateral thinking is definitely required to complete the game and the satisfaction of working out the answer to some of the puzzles is equivalent to that gained from the solving of entire games with more conventional plots.

What a shame there won't be any more text adventures from the software house which has given so much pleasure over the years. Scapeghost definitely marks the end of an era; let's hope the HUGE games are an adequate replacement.

Definitely a sad farewell this, and no good riddance. Perhaps nostalgia will one day persuade Level 9 to give us another adventure.