Forest Of Long Shadows - Martin Page (Sinclair User-October 86) Just one program this month - by M. Page. It's a very neat role-playing graphic adventure. It's a game for one to four players and unlike a text adventure, typing it in won't give you many clues on how to win. Like most role- playing adventures it's also different each time you play - your character changes as does the layout of the forest maze. Your quest is to venture in the Forest of the Long Shadows to find and visit the Four Castles of the Dark and return unscathed to the safety and comfort of the Jolly Aardvark Inn. On your travels you will meet many other travellers and forest dwellers - some friendly, most not. And you will have to fight to survive. As you would expect, being a role-playing game, you and the individuals you meet each have certain characteristics - in true D&D style. Each time you play your attributes will be different so each game presents a different challenge. * Strength rating gives you power to fight battles. * Endurance rating tells you how much damage you can sustain before you give up living. * Personality determines whether you make friends easily or not. The other creatures you encounter each have their own strengths and weaknesses and by comparing your strengths with theirs you'll have to decide whether to run or fight. Just in case you make the wrong choice, at the start you are given four resurrection spells so you can afford to be killed four times. Unfortunately, if you are killed you will be brought back to life elsewhere in the forest, which is very irritating if you were just about to visit one of the Castles when you are killed. You will discover many different hazards in this program, bad weather, monsters, knights (including the particularly nasty Black Knight), objects, and certain special locations. More than that, I will not divulge. The screen display shows your current position in the forest, a little picture of your character in the middle of the screen, together with any other characters present (although all the players look the same they do have different colour backgrounds), your attributes - strengths and so on - and it has a very nice border on the outside. Playing notes: * If you get the message - 'The path is blocked' whilst moving, it means there isn't a corresponding path in the adjacent location. * A flashing SPACE in the corner of the message window means press space to continue after you have read the message. * Make a map of your explorations. You'll need plenty of paper as the game layout changes every time you play. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ TYPE: Role Playing Graphic Adventure COMMENT: This info file was typed by Jim Grimwood Downloaded from: Desert Island Disks -- http://www.image.dk/~frankie/ Maintained by: Michael Bruhn -- frankie@image.dk