IFReviewed by
Andrew Plotkin on 2006-06-25 08:34
A "dungeon crawl" if ever there was one. There is no story; you crawl through the dungeon and collect treasures, magical artifacts, and keys which unlock doors to more treasures and magical artifacts.
I didn't actually finish the last few commands of this game; a critical item refused to come loose. I think this is because I left a magical book behind somewhere. I was not motivated to go back looking for it.
The game area is very large and tolerably well described; the writing works pretty well. I did, indeed, feel like I was wandering around a gloomy -- er -- dungeon.
There's just a numbing sameness about it all. A piece of scenery will be mentioned only if there's something hidden in it. There is a long string of locked doors and locked chests. And most of the things you find don't do much (although some do); you generally find things in order to have them.
As with Gary Roggin's other game ("Aardvarkbarf"), there is some weak parsing, notably "climb down" instead of "down" or "d". And there are -- again -- food requirements and an inventory limit, neither for any good reason.
