Beware of the Wulf

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One of the better Spectrum games, Sabre Wulf has now been released for the BBC Micro by Ultimate, and it's already high in the software charts.

The idea is to collect four pieces of a shield and take them to a cave, but there are a variety of animals, such as snakes, hippos, spiders and birds determined to stop you. There are also natives, and a Sabre Wulf, who lives near the mountains at the bottom of the map.

Other features are various pieces of treasure, worth only points, extra-life plants and flowers with various effects - speeding you up, slowing you down, reversing the controls, killing everything on the screen, and reversing the effects of the others.

There are a multitude of rooms in the maze, and without a map it should take you a long time to complete the adventure. The pieces of the shield are positioned fairly randomly, but the rooms often look similar.

When you have finished your quest, or used up all your lives, you are awarded a score, and a percentage. The latter is an indication of the number of rooms you have visited, so you can finish on less than 100 per cent.

Graphic quality is excellent, with very good use of colour, and a superb selection of flora and fauna to navigate. Movement is smooth, although two character flicker if superimposed. There is a wide variety of creatures, and altogether the graphics are well above average.

All in all, Sabre Wulf is an excellent game and very well worth the money.

Stuart Menges