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The young ladies of St Brides' School for Girls are at it again. Their first attempt at producing a Quilled adventure game gave rise to The Secret Of St Brides. This was an interesting and quite novel game set in the aforementioned school, though it wasn't without a few rough edges. Still, it was promising enough to make me look forward to their next effort, and though not fully finished The Snow Queen looks like another interesting game.

Based on the old tale of the same name, the adventure casts you not in the role of the character Gerda, but instead allows you to 'advise' her. This is quite an original touch, since it allows Gerda herself to retain a certain amount of independence, and she is quite capable of going her own way, or of defying your orders if she doesn't like them (try as I might, I couldn't get her to beat up her grandmother). This adds a bit extra to the game, as it means that you not only have to work out how to solve the problems that Gerda faces, but also to try and understand how Gerda thinks - you have to stay 'in character' in other words.

As with their first game, the St. Brides pupils score highly for imagination, but have still left a few rough edges on the implementation of their ideas. The Quill's vocabulary has an in-built 'Quit' command that seems to have been disabled for some reason in this game, and there's no 'help' facility which is something that I personally always consider an irritating oversight in a game. If the program doesn't offer you any help it should still recognise the word itself. Even an unhelpful "You're doing OK on your own" is better than being told that the computer doesn't understand the word 'Help'.

Despite this though, The Snow Queen is an improvement on their first effort. It's not yet completely finished, as the graphics have still to be added using Gilsoft's Illustrator (and the new utility, The Patch?) so perhaps fuller review might be in order in an issue or so.