Previous Next

Now that Elite has broken the games mould and set the standard for the future, it's good to see Micro Power following in Acornsoft's footsteps. Castle Quest is, I quote, "...an interactive adventure and strategy game with arcade-style action and graphics". It's rather a mouthful and a lot to live up to, but this sentence actually sums up the game quite accurately.

The scenario is a castle, and the aim is to use the various artifacts that just happen to be scattered about to solve puzzles, so that you can make a complete tour of the castle. Without giving too much away, I'll say the artifacts include swords and oxygen cylinders.

The puzzles? Well, for instance, you've been caught by some nasty green guards, dumped into a dingy dungeon, and all you have in the cold with you are a stool, a bed and a burning torch much too high for you to reach, and you must escape.

The fun of the game is in how you play it, and it's certainly a challenge - so much so that Micro Power are offering £1 to every person who can solve the puzzle within three months of purchase, and a further £500 worth of computer equipment to the winner of a future competition between the four highest scorers.

Visually, Castle Quest is easily identifiable as a Micro Power game. There's little use of sound other than the pitter-patter of feet, and Mode 2 provides some good use of colours. The characters include the odd wizard and lots of little red monkeys running everywhere, and the game introduces the delightfully named Scrollerama - a technique for producing the best hardware scrolling I've seen yet on the Beeb.

Thirteen keys are used in all, though you can use only ten at any one time. However, because the game is not an all-out arcade game this is not a problem. Scoring is almost impossible!

Although Castle Quest is an on-going adventure it's not possible to save your present position, so you must start each game anew.

While not jumping into Elite's shoes Castle Quest follows closely in its footsteps, and although not cheap it's certainly worth buying.