Producer: Level 9 Computing
Retail Price: £9.95
Authors: P. and M. Austin, I. Buxton

Snowball is a large adventure game with over seven thousand locations but don't let this dissuade you from undertaking the adventure as many of the locations are repeated. Although this may give rise to misgivings concerning the structure of the game, let me at once allay such fears. Snowball 9 is an interstar transport and the repeated locations reflect the symmetry inherent in any well-designed, modular spacecraft.

Level 9 have produced a lavish booklet giving 12 pages of information and background that leaves the fanciful efforts of less literate manufacturers firmly folded within their highly decorative cassette cases. In short it is excellent and reveals a literary style and flair which imbues the whole work, and owes much to a careful consideration of the game as a wholesome concept as opposed to a mere flight of whimsy. TV Star Trek fans may know something of which I speak.

The booklet, like the adventure, is both informed and pointedly witty in a way that only science fiction can be. It includes a geopolitical summary of 2195 and paints a not implausible picture of five big sophisticated, fully urbanised nations overseeing a status quo that has the Free Nations poor and under-developed. In the near future the Big 5 will finally decide to help but in the 2190s they are chasing stars.

You play Kim Kimberley, secret agent extraordinary, and you are described as fairly intelligent and athletic with brown eyes and fair hair. Captain Kirk perhaps? Unlikely since you are 55 kilos and only 1.7m tall - and you're a woman.

A detailed background in the booklet tells of how Snowball 9 set off for the EEC's Ceres base to colonise the star system Eridani A. Passenger discs carrying 200,000 colonists were followed by the Snowball's engine unit accelerated rapidly by its four great fusion motors. Ten ton blocks of ammonia-ice, fired from accelerators beyond Pluto, were reeled in by Snowball's skyhooks to be used later as fuel for the fusion drives. The ice-shell, which gave the Snowball Series its name, formed most of the mass of the completed craft.

You begin the adventure inauspiciously enough in a coffin - a freezer coffin - as featured in science fiction films. Much of the early phase is spent sidestepping for waiting - a clue) the ominous clanking and indubitably deadly nightingales as you struggle to rise from the lower levels of a passenger disc. Your mission is to find the main control room in the engine unit and save the starship. You find yourself in an intimidatingly vast starship but part of the adventure is to find that part which is most consequential to your mission.

The first thing that strikes you during the early scenes is the quality and substance of the descriptions. The language is very imaginative: 'YOU ARE ON A SIGNIFICANT CYLINDRICAL LEDGE ABOVE STEPS TO A TOROIDAL WALKWAY. TRANSPEX TUBES LEAD AWAY THROUGH A MAZE OF WIRES AND MACHINERY.' and 'THE SOUTH WALL IS A WAVERY AND OBSCURE CONFUSION OF FLICKERY VIDS.' Some of the examine reports are amazingly long and detailed. This literary competence is further affirmed with the inclusion of science fiction scenes and devices. Cylindrical airlocks lie between 2 iris doors, cyladders transport you up and down (or on a larger scale - around); there are transpextubes, ultrasound scalpels and plasteel, plastic with the strength of steel.

Well, if you insist on receiving some clues. You must have the helmet before entering the air lock (although you are given one or two moves to get back out) and you need the probe to repair the robot which gives you a space helmet in return.

You don't score points for collecting treasures in Snowball: instead you gain by doing things that are steps on the way to the eventual goal, e.g. assembling a working spacesuit scores points. According to that learned script, the booklet, if you get killed you lose a lot of points. Its amazing what you can learn if you read the instructions!

Snowball has no graphics and is a trifle slow but I would nevertheless highly recommend it. The adventure sets new standards in descriptions and can be likened to a good science fiction novel. The full, vivid and highly imaginative text evokes a mental imagery that far surpasses that which any simple computer graphics might achieve.

The program is very user friendly both with the input it will accept and its responsiveness. There is a pleasantly surprising width of intelligent responses for any input you may think up. Definitely an adventure for someone with a bad case of the 'You Can'ts'. Those powerful and realism-creating commands, Search and Examine, are used extensively to a point when you can certainly believe that Level 9 have devised their own super-compact adventure language known as 'a-code'. There's no question that they've packed a lot into this one.

Level 9 have produced a very good adventure that sets new standards in description and data compaction. This is very much my idea of an adventure and is set to become a classic.

ON COURSE FOR HELL

Memory: 48K
Price: £9.90

Dep in space, the giant colony ship Snowball hurtles towards its destination in the system of Eridani A. Formed of ten enormous passenger discs, within which sleep millions of pioneers, the vessel is powered by accelerator units fuelled with ammonia ice. The ice is wrapped in a mass around the discs and gives she ship its name.

All the ship's functions are carried out by machines and the eerie passages of the yesa d are patrolled by Nightingales, dangerous robot guards. But... something has gone wrong aboard Snowball and you - Kim Kimberley, the sbps security agent - are woken from hibernation. Snowball is heading straight into the nuclear hell of its target star.

Those are the bones of the plot of the Level 9 classic text-only adventure Snowball. As with all their adventures no space is wasted on graphics and the program is enormous, having 7,000 locations, hundreds of messages and tricky puzzles to solve. The number of locations is achieved by having each passenger disc designed exactly alike. Another innovation is a woman as the central character and the scenario itself is consistent and well-planned, depicting a believable science fiction world.

To score you must achieve significant steps in your attempt to reach the control unit and everything you find will have some sort of function. Working out those functions is a major aspect of the adventure. First you must escape from your freezer coffin and assemble a space suit. On your journey through the immense vessel you will be given lengthy location descriptions befitting the complexity of the Snowball and there is a wealth of detail to take in. The setting is highly atmospheric and imaginative. The interpreter will accept relatively complex language and is versatile in its responses, a feature which enhances the overall effect.

The accompanying booklet gives the player a background summary of the political setup behind Snowball's mission. Level 9 will also provide cluesheets if required - and you will probably need one.

This is only brief outline of what is an outstanding adventure. Play it... you've got a snowball's chance in hell but it's potsible you may succeed.

MUSIC TO FREEZE BY!

I never thought it possible that I would actually start writing about a game whilst it was still loading! But I have been won over before the tape is halfway through!

The gentle tones of an organ are playing a captivating melody in two voices through the speaker of my BBC micro, as Snowball from Level 9 loads. Here, then, is the first game I have ever wanted to carry on loading. A "cover picture" I am used to, but a full-length classic rendering? Incredible!

I contacted Level 9, to discover the name of the piece. It is Winter from the Four Seasons Vivaldi. A very appropriate title to accompany this adventure! But will the game be as enjoyable as its theme tune?

Snowball seems an unlikely name for a science fiction adventure. The booklet supplied with the game gives a fully documented background, and the personal history of Kim Kimberley, the part you are about to play.

Snowball 9 is a vessel assembled in space, and fuelled by frozen ammonia in which it is encapsulated, to take its cargo of colonists from Ceres base.

Kim was specially trained as a secret agent, to be awoken from her freezer-coffin only if something went wrong aboard Snowball on its journey to Eirdani A. And something just has...

The game, when eventually loaded, runs in black and white text, (not surprising, as it is claimed to have 7,000 locations) and has a good response speed. The text is wordy enough to be interesting, and perhaps mysterious rather than cryptic.

After my first few moves, having just read the booklet, I began to feel I was taking part in a film rather like a cross between 2001 and Alien. Cold shivers were the order of the day, for the second time around. I knew that the clanking mechanical noises getting nearer and nearer, sometimes fading, sometimes not, were coming from a Nightingale.

Nightingales are great big ugly black things with hypos and syringes inside. Not at all what I expected from a creature from Berkeley Square. Strange!

Oh! Yeah! I just got it! But where was the lamp for the Adventurer?

So - how do I escape? "Up" says the book - trouble is I am disoriented and keep running into walls. The answer must be locked in the control panel. Now this has ten buttons and six indicator lights - quite a number of combinations, or is there a code staring me in the face?

Whatever the answer - I must hurry! I hear faint mechanical noises coming from outside...! It's all in the buttons and light, I have now decided. And I'm getting the hang of them - I think! Where did I read that this game should take a few weeks on average?

A chiller in more ways than one! The scene is set with such realism I can imagine a future advertisement: "You've played the game - now see the film!" And when that happens, Adventure games will have really arrived!

Snowball is from Level 9 Computing, price £9.90, and available for BBC (B), Commodore 64, Spectrum 48k, Lynx 48k, Nascom 32k, Oric 48k, and Atari 32k. If you have one of these micros and like a difficult adventure - buy it! Note that only the BBC version comes with the title music.

A SNOWBALL'S CHANCE IN DEEPEST SPACE

MICRO: BBC, CBM64, Spectrum plus others
PRICE: £9.90
FORMAT: Cassette
SUPPLIER: Level 9

Galactic agent Ken Matthews tackles murderous robots, the perils of cold sleep, and a crazed saboteur in Level 9's epic Snowball.

I scream aloud and thrash wildly as I awake to find myself in a padded coffin with no apparent exit. Fortunately, my frantic movements nudge a previously unseen lever, the coffin opens and light floods in.

Reason penetrates my sleep numbed brain and I realise that I'm aboard the colony ship Snowball 9 bound for the new world of Eridani A. The fact that I'm alone means that something is terribly wrong - the 1.8 million passengers sleep on.

The above is my interpretation of the opening moves of Pete Austin's epic Snowball, a well structured, all-text adventure set in the twenty third century and based, in part, on Larry Niven's novel The Mote in God's Eye. Unlike most, the adventure loses nothing from its lack of graphics since, like Infocom games, descriptions are very thorough and allow full scope to the player's own imagination.

You take the part of Kim Kimberley, a secret agent, placed aboard without the crew's knowledge to take over in an emergency, which is, of course, just what's happened. Armed, initially, with only an elegant backless hospital gown you must divert the ship from its collision course with the alien sun of the new Eden.

The background for the adventure is covered extremely well in the twelve page booklet accompanying the game and a description of the Snowball itself means that you can have at least some idea of where to go from the start. Basically the Snowball consists of ten vast, rotating 'freezer discs', each containing 180,000 sleeping colonists. These discs are enclosed in a vast shell of ammonia ice, to both protect the passengers and serve as fuel for the giant fusion engines. Freezer control and other services are mounted on the outer surface of the shell. This huge ecosystem is attached to the motor unit and control room by a vast cable network called the 'Web' which incorporates 'Jacob's Ladder', a system to allow transport of personnel and fuel to the motor unit.

For the adventurer, the first challenge is to escape from the mortuary levels. You soon realise the freezer systems have detected your early awakening and have despatched the robot Nightingales to put you back to sleep - permanently! To aid your escape, and for later, it is useful to crack the colour code of the indicator lights scattered about the mortuary levels - electronics enthusiasts should have little trouble.

Several lives later, you will elude the syringe-wielding Nightingales and collapse breathlessly into an elevator on the floor above. From here, it is easy to find your way to the sealed off Freezer Control, hopefully clutching your trusty, airtight toolbox. As you wander around you will find two usable exits, the first leading to a massage parlour (maybe, after all that sleep, a quick rub down might be invigorating!) and the other to open space which, without a space suit, is inevitably fatal. The only one who seems to know where he's going is the scruffy little cleaning droid...

Now at the centre of things in Freezer Control the mystery unfolds with the discovery of the dead body of a ship's officer. Still, every cloud etc, and you find yourself a few useful items the richer. You're sure the screen would provide some useful clues if only you can get the blinking thing to work after looking at it for ages! Exploring the living quarters makes you even better equipped to continue your mission. The library finally points out your next step and adds to your battery of equipment. Lentil custard might seem rather useless now but would have been welcome when you'd just woken up.

Pretty soon you return to this area, codes and Nightingales hopefully dispensed with to deal with more of the electronic denizens of this floating world. Two problems face you at this stage in the form of one ailing droid and several bureaucratic ones each needing to be satisfied in its own way. You can play with the paper-pushers all you like but the damaged droid has only a short time to go! Still, at least now you're equipped to go outside.

Once on the outside you soon find yourself climbing round on the seemingly endless web of cables connecting the Snowball to its drive unit. The suit air is limited and you'd best make a positive move quite quickly. A certain step in the right direction leaves you floating in space and approaching the ice field at fatal speed any hint given here would be a shot in the dark!

You next encounter the monorail system which provides simple access to several useful locations such as the Habidome, Robodome, Warehouse and the route to the motor unit/control room. Getting to these locations and the items they contain will be no problem to the, by now, experienced Kim Kimberley but two major challenges present themselves in the form of a broken down Snowdozer that must be repaired and sent on its way, and a deadly waldroid (controlled remotely by the saboteur) which prevents your access to Jacob's Ladder. Assembling the items to repair the Snowdozer is quite straightforward, providing you've discovered how to replenish your air supply, but the waldroid must be disabled and this is no mean task - if you can crack this one you'll be painting the town tonight.

Eventually though you will reach the top of the ladder and find the base of the drive unit/control room. Here you encounter the villain's second line of defence which, while not a patch on the first, still requires a purr-fect solution to get you past it.

At last! You've reached the control area but don't get carried away - a little caution will prevent a real roasting from a hidden laser. You must reflect carefully before making your next move.

The final problem faces you! A crazed, armed saboteur when you'd expected a fanfare or similar accolade! Still forewarned is forearmed and in a quick flurry of moves the Snowball is safe.

The above is not a solution but one of several scenarios that might apply during the playing of Snowball and hopefully gives some idea of the drama that builds up during a game session part of what makes Level 9 games interesting and absorbing. It really is easy to imagine your role as the main character in a novel. The storyline presented above gives only a suggestion of the possibilities open to the player and a few hints to the more abstract problems. A huge amount of descriptive narrative has been omitted, together with the location of almost all items and the simpler problems that need to be solved to obtain them, to allow you, the player, to discover for yourself the intriguing worlds of Level 9.

If you are new to Level 9 adventures you will find that careful mapping and examination of ALL items will pay dividends. Use of items is made easy by the extended vocabulary of over 200 words and the program's ability to search a complicated command sentence and guess at your meaning. This alone makes Snowball worth playing when compared to other adventures where hours that could be spent problem solving are wasted in a frustrated search to find a command the program understands. This command analyser is a refreshing improvement over Level 9's Middle Earth Trilogy - Dungeon Adventure didn't understand 'GET'!

Every item in Snowball can be used, but some needn't be, and although points are scored and lost, there are no treasures to collect, only your mission to complete believe me, that's enough!

The game itself comes attractively and sturdily packed to be Post Office proof. The accompanying booklet contains a first class introduction to the adventure and boasts artwork usually reserved for the better role playing games. It is well produced, comprehensive and free of typographical errors - which is not true of the spelling in the game itself. My copy loaded first time but is backed up on side two just in case. Also included is a voucher entitling the buyer to a free clue, but I'm told you now receive a complete hint sheet in return for your sae - not that you'll need it given this review and Tony Bridge.

In summary, I believe that Level 9 adventures leave Scott Adams and others far behind and are matched in concept, design and implementation only by Infocom and to some extent Melbourne House. Before you all write in in praise of Scott et al, this is not intended as a criticism - indeed I was weaned on Adventures 1-12 - but as a suggestion that the adventure game has evolved to allow more interaction between us and the programs we love. Level 9 certainly seem to be the British leaders in this field.