Producer: Dented Designs
Retail Price: £3.99
Author: A Sanders, H Church, M Eacrett

Somewhere in the backwaters of space lies a blue-green planet whose inhabitants are so utterly primitive that they still think the C5 is a pretty neat idea... So starts a game whose humorous inspiration becomes quite clear when names such as Arfur Bent and Ford Escort roam around a Vulgar belching star cruiser with the aid of a Burble fish hearing device. Consider further the programming teams' name, a reworking of Denton Designs, and you have what looks like, and indeed is, a satire in the mould of Fergus McNeil (cited here as one Fungus McNaill). The point is that Fergus McNeil's satires deal with Tolkien and other 'straight' fantasy works, whereas Dented attempt to satirise an already deeply whimsical set of books (Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guides). You can't help wondering how much of this software's charm lies in its simply purloining the best parts of the Hitchiker's Series, and how much on the new extra dash of humour spread on top.

Arfur Bent's day starts much as you'd expect - nursing a hangover in bed, surrounded by countless empty bottles. The picture showing him snoozing in his bedroom is slowly drawn, but as with many in the three parts which make up this adventure, has a certain cartoon-like charm which in some way matches its overriding simplicity. You can collect up all the bottles and examine them (the bottles had previously held double- strength Scotch Whiskey), this ability to examine things being rather rare in the adventure as a whole. The bathroom is found to be in a bit of a mess, but the everuseful toilet roll is here. A randomly-inspired message pops up now and again which states, 'Contrary to popular belief, the Truck Driver's Guide to the Universe says that the toilet roll is the most precious and important item any person or being could possibly possess' and so it seems the right thing to pick the roll up forthwith. Other humorous asides refer to a certain Marillion fan (yes, that Fungus again), the planet with 'Nice Big Macs' (The Earth, stupid), and the fact that the Truck Driver's Guide makes no mention of the VIC 20 whatsoever.

Don't Panic is no mean attempt at bringing the travails of Ford Prefeet and Co to the microcomputer screen. It is a Quilled and Illustrated affair with slowly shaded drawings, the odd typing error, and the odd query against its structure as at the bridge where you are told of a north-south path but not the east exit which sees progress). What the game does possess is oodles of character, good use of colour to enliven the text, and lines that are so ridiculous they tickle the chuckletums ('If you want to succeed, then supercede your old seeds with our new Superseeds. Sow some soon' - seen in the garden centre). Certainly worth the few Acturan Mega-Credits for this long three-parter, Don't Panic is available mail order from Dented Designs, 11 The Hill, Portstewart, Co. Londonderry BT55 7AT.

Difficulty: tricky in places, tacky in others
Graphics: simple with a certain cartoon flavour
Presentation: good; readable sci-fi character set
Input facility: verb/noun
Response: Quill

Label: Dented Designs
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Gary Rook

Don't Panic - Panic Now! (which from now on I'm going to call DPPN) is an example of a genre of adventure game made famous by the sainted Fergus McNeil of Delta 4: that of the spoof or parody.

Indeed, one Fungus MacNaill makes an appearance in DPPN, rabbitting on about Delta 4.

Unfortunately, Dented Designs aren't half as good at it as Delta 4. In DPPN, as any fan of the four books in the Hitch-Hiker trilogy may have guessed by now, the words being parodied are those of Douglas Adams (and presumably the Infocom adventure game based on the books as well).

The whole thing has been put together with The e Quill and Illustrator, and the graphics are typically angular, although pretty good nonetheless. The game is divided into three parts, and you have to solve each preceding part to get into the next one. Why designers think this is a good idea I don't know - I think it's far more likely to put people off buying the games. Why shouldn't you solve Part 2 before Part 1 anyway?

You are Arfur Bent, your house is about to be demolished by the big yellow bulldozers, your friend Ford Popular (or is it Consul?) keeps wittering on about the end of the world... yes, you've heard it all before.

But wait! That means that the answers to the problems are the same, right? Well, no, actually. Try lying down in front of these bulldozers, and you get run over.

Unfortunately, there isn't enough originality to grab your interest.

That may seem like a strange thing to say of a parody adventure, but actually it's not enough just to twist a few ideas and make a few bad jokes. You have to work very hard at pastiches to make them funny, otherwise they get very dull, very quickly.

I think that Dented Designs would have been far better advised if it had written an entirely new plot around the same basic problems There's nothing wrong with the actual puzzles themselves. They work fine.

I can't really recommend Don't Panic - Panic Now, unless you have a long wet Saturday to fill. There's plenty of quantity, but no real meat.