Previous Next

This is a slicky presented but small adventure, likely to suit the younger player. The packaging, the pictures in the so-called 'case file', and the setup of the screen while you are playing are all smooth and convincing, but otherwise, Franklin's Tomb doesn't quite live up to its promise. The main part of the game lacks cohesion; you wander from an aquarium to rooms with beautiful murals, into a bathroom, a prison complete with torture chamber, and on to something called the 'star-gate'.

A few of the puzzles are very neat. There is a room with cables running from floor to ceiling, but I won't tell you how to use it as it would spoil the fun. Apart from these few high spots, the game is not very captivating. There are too few locations, just one ordinary, rather large maze, and a paucity of good puzzles.

Several of the unforgiveable sins of adventure software are committed. There are no fewer than five spelling mistakes, and any rude word fed in will come straight back at you from the computer. The input is otherwise very rigid.

For instance, you cannot put more than one space between the two words you are allowed to enter, nor add any extra words.

A couple of good ideas founder on details. The games provide function key entry, but it is easy to crash the program by, say, putting a long string in key 7 before loading. And key 9 is too close to BREAK, which is not disabled in any way.

The screen layout also turns out to be a handicap. Your inventory is always displayed, and all the available exist, but this leaves only a 9 x 18 box for location descriptions and an inadequate strip at the bottom for input. Any objects you encounter are described in this strip and a long list of many objects won't fit!

So Franklin's Tomb gets a C+: could do better. Let's hope Salamander will do just that with parts two and three.