Mission impossible...

I am always on the lookout for new adventures, and particularly those issuing from amateur rather than professional software houses, so I ran the Quest For Merlin with eager anticipation.

I found a three-part adventure with a nice loading screen, some humour in the introduction, a vast choice of background and text colours - and then things fell apart.

The task is straightforward enough: Merlin has gone walkabout on account of his not fancying the amount he's supposed to stump up for his poll tax. The player has the unenviable task of locating him.

The documentation that came with Quest For Merlin was non-existant: A map which conveyed absolutely no information whatever was the only thing supplied: it didn't even identify the starting location.

However, I persevered and plodded my way around, discovering items here and there, talking to various entities - and even kissing one of them. Hatters like to pucker-up and osculate from time to time.

What really hampered my progress was an almost impenetrable parser which - in spite of the authors' boasts - I found to be very limited indeed. The other thing that struck me forcibly was the price - rather high for a pedestrian text adventure.

I honestly cannot recommend it unreservedly, unless you are desperate for a new adventure and have already bought Rainbow's End which I reviewed in January's issue of The Micro User.

Mad Hatter