Personal Computer Games


Cuthbert Enters The Tombs Of Doom

Author: Bob Wade
Publisher: Microdeal
Machine: Commodore 64

 
Published in Personal Computer Games #14

Cuthbert Enters The Tombs Of Doom

You are in the tombs of Ledromica and you are trying to find the temple of Rah where you will be rewarded with a great treasure.

The tombs consist of over 200 screens through which you must pass. This is made difficult by the fact that you continually have to pick up keys to open doors which block your path. It is essential that you don't hang about in doing this because in each section of the tombs you only have a limited supply of oxygen. You only get more air when you open the door to the next section.

There are also treasures trapped in the walls and these can be picked up for points. Greed can get you into trouble though since some large batches of treasure are trapped behind doors which you don't need to open in order to complete the course. This may leave you a key short and you'll asphyxiate quietly in a corner.

Your biggest problems, however, are the tomb-dwelling nasties that magically appear through the 'evyl' portals. There are two ways of dealing with them: the best way is to zap them. Or you can take on the monsters with one of your three magic lamps. If a monster is touched in a room of the same colour as the lamp, it is instantly immobilised. But you can use the lamp only once, after which it has to be refilled by gaining 2,000 points in a chamber of the same colour.

In some rooms there are also transportation chambers which can move you around the screen from one to another, often getting you past an otherwise impassable obstacle.

The rooms are repetitive so the real test is how much perseverance you have. Size alone can't make this game a winner.

Simon Chapman

Continuing the current trend of arcade adventures, Cuthbert has a good atmosphere, an air of excitement and plenty of locations for you to guide the 'Dragon-originated' hero through.

I liked it mainly because of the combination of solid thinking puzzles combined with the arcade zapping of the spooky nasties.

It has the correct level of difficulty: hard but potentially beatable, fun too! It'll have you returning again and again to get that much further. Beware of XXVI!! Very well packaged (cryptic clue).

Samantha Hemens

Although I did enjoy this game, the fact that most of the tombs were pretty similar ruined it.

After running Cuthbert around wildly, collecting lots of treasures and opening quite a few doors I didn't seem to have got anywhere. There were more rooms, more treasures and more doors to open. How tedious can you get?

There are a couple of interesting new features, such as the oil lamps immobilising the ghosts and having to stop yourself running out of air, but apart from that it's all pretty run of the mill.

Bob Wade

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