Adventures Can Be Fun

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Franklin's Tomb is the first in a trilogy of adventures for the Beeb from Salamander.

It is very attractively packaged, and has an excellent manual, with drawings of some of thc locations, as well as the instructions.

You are Dan Diamond, a private eye full of witticisms like "You got a light Mac?" I asked.

"No, but I got a dark brown overcoat", he replied.

You receive an unsigned letter. Inside is an address, and a message: "Please come, you're our only hope".

On arrival, you trigger a mechanism, and find yourself falling. Suddenly you are in Franklin's Tomb, and the adventure begins.

The screen is split into three different coloured sections. One section gives a descrip tion of your surroundings, another lists your possessions and the last is for commands, computer response and articles to be found as you enter a location.

The response to commands is very fast, and it is possible to stack up commands, a feature that I always really appreciate. The program recognised most of the traditional keywords, although some of the responses were not quite what I expected. For instance, its response to "Wave rod", was, "OK, but no-one waves back!" - a sense of humour yet!

Unfortunately, the content does not live up to the presentation.

The problems in the adven ture are reasonably easy to solve. In fact the real problem lies in trying to keep one eye on thc description at the top of the screen, and the other on the bottom, for any articles or treasure present.

There is a rather elusive rabbit walking around this program and I kept missing him because I was too busy watching the top of the screen.

After discounting the normal keywords for movement, getting and dropping, there are about 30 verbs you can use. Most of these can be deduced from room descriptions, and the drawings in the manual.

I also found the variety of colour on the screen to be very tiring, and I would have liked a command enabling you to turn it off.

Overall, a nicely packaged program, but definitely not for the more experienced adventurer.

I find the idea of a trilogy of adventures very exciting. I just hope the other two programs are a little more demanding.

And please! Don't program "Beeps" into the keys! The wife keeps coming in at 3am and saying: "Right! That's more than enough out of you for tonight.

"Time for bed!"

Paul Gardener