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Games Computing
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Colditz (Phipps Associates)
This is the classic wartime strategy adventure in which the player (adventurer) attempts to rescue a fellow prisoner from solitary confinement and then escape from Colditz castle without being caught by the guards.
Clear, concise, instructions are given on loading which make up for almost total lack of support literature. These then give way to an austere introductory illustration of Colditz castle which sets the scene superbly. The Adventure uses 'The Famous Phipps Split Screen Graphics and Scrolling Text Window Technique', which works very well and is easy to use unless the intrepid prisoner of war types in a sentence of over 30 characters in length, in which case the program irrevocably crashes.
The adventure is entertaining, but rarely mind taxing as the main object seems to be to avoid making too much noise - do not, for instance, pull on a bell rope or cross a room with creaky floorboards twice. The only thing really lacking is an on screen scoring system which would be invaluable in gauging the relative effectiveness of various strategies.
There is one more fortunate inconsistency in the program. If you find the sharpening stone, for instance, you can pick it up by either typing "get sharpening stone" or "get stone", this is fair enough, but it can be annoying if after typing "get stone" you try to "drop sharpening stone" and cannot even though it features on your inventory. It is necessary to always refer to each object by the same name.
Despite these minor grievances the adventure as a whole is good quality, challenging, and unusually addictive for an adventure game in the same price range.