Previous Next

You're a professor who is given the task of finding a vital golden key stolen by the evil time warrior, which you must return to its proper place. To do this you travel through time and space in your trusty time machine, collecting different coloured keys - each allows the time machine to take you elsewhere in history. A text adventure in two parts, Adventure In Time And Space was programmed using the good old Quill by Dorothy Millard, a lady from down under.

I quite enjoyed this adventure - I especially liked the way it's divided into different sections, each of which must be solved in turn if progress is to be made. The text descriptions aren't very verbose and consist mainly of brief location descriptions, a list of available exits and any items of interest you see lying around. However, this doesn't detract from the game's overall playability.

Humour, which I always enjoy in an adventure (unless it's taken to extremes) abounds. For example, near the start of the game I got into my car and drove around town. While driving, each new location description ended with the phrase "...after looking around you notice a bright red car (with you in it)." Try taking the toys from your kid's bedroom too.

One of the funniest moments of all happened when I entered the control room of a deserted space station, cautiously approaching a control panel containing some buttons and a switch. Being a careful sort of bloke, I decided to RAMSAVE first (another useful feature). Well, who'd risk pressing buttons without saving their position? After taking this necessary precaution, I held my breath and pressed away, hardly daring to look for fear of dire consequences. The response? 'You get a cup of coffee from the dispenser!' All good stuff and bound to give you hours of fun.

On the negative side, I found the parser a bit 'picky', spending a lot of time finding an acceptable verb noun input, which is unfortunate - beginners especially could find this very frustrating.

Even so, it's far from disastrous, and certainly didn't spoil a very enjoyable game.