Home Computing Weekly


Spooks

Publisher: Mastertronic
Machine: Commodore 64

 
Published in Home Computing Weekly #113

This is a joystick controlled graphic adventure, in which you have to rid a haunted mansion of ghosts by collecting eight musical boxes and playing them all together at the entrance. It is menu-driven; your location is shown on the left-hand half of the screen, and a control panel on the right displays the options available to you.

A very attractive title screen is displayed while the program loads, but the graphics for the game itself are not up to the same standard. The display does not scroll smoothly, but jumps suddenly from one section of the house to another, which I found very disorienting. The rooms are shown in plain view, and are very small, so you can see several of them at once. They all look much the same... you will have to be baked to death in the oven before you discover which it is!

Any contact with a ghost proves instantly fatal, and being ghosts they can pass through walls, so dodging them is not easy. You can stun them by throwing heavy objects at them, but this is quite a tricky procedure which involves a lot of delicate manipulation of the joystick.

The instructions given are very brief. As the game is menu-driven, there is no mystery about the range of commands available to you, but you have to work out for yourself how to use them.

It isn't a classic game, .but like the others in this range, it is remarkably good value for money.