Pirate Island is a straightforward adventure on fairly typical lines.

However, the instructions lead one to expect that there will at least be a brief glimpse of a map, with a vocabulary of available words, but neither appeared.

This was unfortunate, as some of the key words are not quite in the familiar form. GET was rejected; TAKE being required. SUM was required to obtain an inventory! Dedicated adventurers like to have the familiar words at their disposal.

However, it was possible to explore about 35 'rooms', amounting to about a fifth of the whole, according to the score, before all ways appeared blocked by death-traps.

The text was sufficiently expressive to create the necessary atmosphere, but the trick of drawing a 'curtain' down over the screen before showing the next location was irritating, and the curtain sometimes failed to appear in time to avoid loss of an input.

A steady scrolling action would be better, allowing reference back to an earlier move.

D.T.