Previous Next

HELL AND DAMNATION

IN THE fifth circle of Hell the damned stare glassy-eyed from the depths of gelid marches. Not in the imagination of the latest swords n' sorcery film director but in the great religious epic poem inferno by 15th Century Italian poet Dante. Dante's symbolic world of hellfire and lost souls is the setting of inferno from Richard Shepherd Software.

You take the role Dante wrote for himself - a pilgrim to the underworld, with the Roman poet Virgil as your guide. Inferno is a text adventure with graphics depicting each location, somewhat in the style of The Hobbit. As you travel deeper into Hell, you will meet the damned and the monsters which guard and torment them. You will have to find a way into the City of Dis and pass through the Forest of Despair before you finally reach your goal.

With such an imaginative idea for a game and the works of the great poet as a source of images it is a pity the graphics are not more inspiring. One can only assume that Richard Shepherd Software felt the true picture might be too horrific for gentle Spectrum owners. That said, the game moves at a fair pace and, although there are not so many problems to be solved as in some adventures, the atmosphere is maintained well and provides some compensation for a simple plot.

Memory: 48K Price: £6.50