An adventure generator is a program which is designed to take the blood, sweat and tears out of programming your own adventure. Writing the storyline of an adventure and designing the traps and problems is one aspect which most mortals can cope with, but actually programming the beast is a very different can of dragons.

This package is aimed mainly at educationalists who wish to quickly and simply create adventures for use by school children. For this reason the generator has been made easy to use but as a consequence, the results are less than riveting. The game produced may be played with either a Concept keyboard or the normal function keys, which makes it attractive to the very young or the physically handicapped. Normal movement commands of NORTH, SOUTH, etc., are replaced by simply pressing the key which corresponds to the location the player wishes to move to. The generator permits the writer to specify problems and solutions for each location, and where required, entry conditions which must be satisfied before the player can move to that area.

In addition to copious notes and suggestions, a sample game is supplied to demonstrate the use of the package. The game tends to give multiple choice questions, requiring the answer a, b or c. To test this game, and hence the generator, I replied "ELEPHANT" to see if the game trapped this as an illegal answer - it didn't! Throughout, the game tends to assume that if you do not reply YES, you must have said NO. When dealing with children, and other evil dwarfs, sloppy logic is not sufficient. A child could type rubbish indefinitely into this game, and both game and player would continue happily for a very long time. It should also be pointed out that the generator does not produce 'stand-alone' games, but a data file which must be run in conjunction with the generator package. This means that you cannot pass a copy of your masterpiece on to your friends or colleagues unless they also possess a copy of the generator.

As an alternative to adventures the package can be used to recreate simulations of particular environments - e.g. visits to nature reserves.

For those wizards looking for a more commercial generator, I note that a BBC version of The Quill is shortly to be released. This game writer which has been available for a year on the Spectrum (pardon me while I spit!), does produce standalone, machine code games, which are already being marketed.