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Fusion Retro Books
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Art War
Greek adventure author Sakis Kaffesakis is back once again with yet another superb little adventure called Art War. You may remember Sakis from Issue 1 as he was also the author of Budrumi! which I reviewed.
Set in the year 1990 the world has become a divided place with two main factions vying for overall control. On one side if the NGPA, New Generation Platforms Alliance and on the other the ASU, Amstrad Socialist Union which you belong to - Well, of course!
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to steal back an invaluable painting titled 'Amstradian Excellence' which was stolen by NGPA secret forces. The painting now resides in the NGPA museum which is where our heist begins.
Just like Budrumi! Art War is completely written in Basic and rather than playing like a standard text adventure with a verb-noun parser, all the commands are choice-driven and are a matter of trial and error. Essentially this means you'll die a number of times before you work out the correct solution, which can feel frustrating at times. Still, not to worry for the game has that 'just one more go' appeal to it, and if you get really stuck there's always the solution file which can be loaded from the game's disk.
Controlling the game is a simple affair as all it uses for input are numerical keys 0-7. There are several rooms to explore within the museum but sadly they all lack decent descriptions. Moving around the museum, you must watch out for all the guards of which there are several to deal with.
Puzzles are logical and fairly obvious but you'll still have to try several times before working out the correct course of action to take.
Graphically the game is okay, with several screens featuring a digitised photo from the author's own collection. Composer 'Manosgg' returns to provide an atmospheric soundtrack that plays throughout the game.
Being a short game, Art War is ideal for those of you who are short on time or fancy dabbling in a touch of easy adventuring. Again, much like Budrumi! had the game had a few more locations and puzzles to solve, it could've been great. Still, it's a run little adventure. It just won't take you long to complete it.
If you fancy a go, you can download Art War for free here: https://tinyurl.com/5uujy7h8
Scores
Amstrad CPC464/664 VersionAtmosphere | 69% |
Interaction | 65% |
Lastability | 57% |
Presentation | 72% |
Overall | 66% |