C&VG
1st April 1987Necris Dome
In the far future, with the earth's resources severely depleted, the dead are sent to an orbiting cemetery, the Necris Dome, to conserve space. The Dome is run by Mandroids, but their boss, the Arch-Mandroid, has become a sentient renegade, and a threat to the earth. You are shipped aboard the Dome in a coffin, and your mission is to kill the Arch baddy at all costs.
With a background scenario as flawed as this (if things were that bad, they'd recycle the corpses, instead of depleting fuel resources even further to get them into orbit) the game itself has got to be an improvement.
That was my theory, anyway! The instructions tell you that PUSH LID will get out of the casket in which you arrive. So, I found, did LISTEN TO BLEEPER - my personal homing bleeper. I thought I'd take the coffin around with me, but GET COFFIN merely put me back inside it - apparently the parser was looking only for one letter, the 'G' of GO. This time, however, there was a pair of gloves inside.
Moving around the dome, I went from chamber to chamber, and came across Mandroids, and a Battle Droid, and all sorts of weird machinery, most of which seemed unusable. I met instant death a number of times, just by walking innocently into places I shouldn't. Trying to fight my way out with my At-lan ("a formidably powerful weapon") had no effect. It seems that its extremely formidable power will work only on the Arch mandroid.
What a very strange game! To be successful, an adventure must hold the interest of the player. Being weak on background, logic, atmosphere, and mystery, I soon found it failed to hold me, and I lost any motivation to proceed further.