Your Sinclair


Star Wreck

Author: Mike Gerrard
Publisher: Alternative
Machine: Spectrum 48K/128K/+2

 
Published in Your Sinclair #24

Star Wreck

For all you Trekkies out there, here's a mission you haven't undertaken before. You're Captain James T. Cake of the Starship Paralysed and you're on your way to the planet Dandrox to deliver your cargo. This comprises one Trell and one Rigellian Slime Beast, which are needed for experimental purposes, and the Thracian Ambassador, who isn't. He's just visiting. You also have on board a Krall, whatever that might be - it's in transit to Alpha-Tricia 111, whatever that is.

All you've got to do is get them all there. Easy? Not with a rust-bucket like the Paralysed, it isn't. Not to mention your crew. For a start there's Ensign Guzunder ("The average Star-Fleet Moron"), and then there's Ensign Weevil, whose gaze definitely says 'out to lunch'. The only fun person sounds like Lieu Yahoo - at least I thought it was fun what she did when I went into her cabin. Wha-hay? This is what we want!

Among the other characters are Dr Leonard Decoy, Zulu, and the ship's engineer, Mr Clot, the only person holding this heap of junk together. Not that he's doing a very good job as you're no sooner up in the air when there's a generator failure. As this operates the elevator which is the principal means of getting from one section of the ship to another, this is a distinct problem. But not to Captain Cake, of course! You have it fixed in a trice, or even sooner, but can you cope with the rest of the emergencies and collect your pay-off at the end?

I enjoyed this game much more than Alternative's other offering, Life-Term, but the main drawback was in trying to discover what you've got to do next. With virtually the whole of the Paralysed open to you from the start (at least until the generator blows), you can wander round and round with little idea of what's going on. Eventually things do start to happen, and my spies tell me that there are quite a few irrelevancies in the game, put in just to raise a chuckle, which is something I always like to see. Chatting to the characters also helps, not to mention trying to do other things to them, which I'll leave you to discover.

Not the lengthiest or hardest of games and the vocabulary could certainly have done with being a bit bigger and more helpful. But it's quite fun, slightly offbeat, and not bad value at £1.99.

Mike Gerrard

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