Night of the Walking Dead

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#006699" TEXT="#080000" background="20f785a3.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#FFFFFF" FACE="Arial" ><B>Mikes Homepage</B></FONT><B>    </B><B> |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Mikes Homepage"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id231.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Zombie Games"><U><B>Zombie Games</B></U></A></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#FFCC66" TEXT="#080000" background="210d2b03.jpg"> <div> <A HREF="horror30.zip" TARGET="_top" TITLE="horror30.zip"><U>Download</U></A></div> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <I>Night of the Walking Dead</I></div> <div> A Text based Adventure.</div> <bR> <div> You are in an old rundown cemetery at the edge of a Louisiana bayou, looking for the grave of your Aunt Bedilia. Can you bring back her locket? Or will you be thwarted by the secrets of the dead? </div> <bR> <div> Horror30.zip is a trilogy of games by John Olsen. The package includes NIGHT OF THE WALKING DEAD, FRANKENSTEIN'S LEGACY, and THE SEA PHANTOM. These three games were each written by Mr. Olsen using his own interpreter, and none is larger than 38K. In NIGHT OF THE WALKING DEAD, you are trying to find your Aunt Bedilia's grave to recover a locket buried with her in order to prove your identity (how graverobbing proves this is unclear) and claim your inheritance. FRANKENSTEIN'S LEGACY is reminiscent of the sample transcript for <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><U>THE LURKING HORROR</U></FONT>. You arrive at Victor Frankenstein's house, instructed by him to find the monster and bring it to life. In THE SEA PHANTOM, you arrive at the coastal mansion of the late Captain Thorne. Once every 10 years his old ship appears offshore. It is your job to put his spirit to rest and recover his treasure. All three are interactive short stories having from 20 to 40 locations each. They are not especially difficult, but have a couple of arbitrary puzzles. This combined with the poor parser may make them a little aggravating if you don't immediately guess what the author is thinking. S.O.P. for an arbitrary puzzle is to keep trying whatever you can think of until you hit on the right thing, but these games have have only 1 or 2 generic "failure" messages, and after a bit it may get maddening to keep reading "You can't," or "You see nothing special." Especially since you get the "You can't" message for just about anything that isn't useful, even actions that you obviously COULD do (i.e. "Throw dagger" ). The parser can also be misleading at times. In one of the games you encounter a locked object. There is no key, you must use some other means of opening it. But if you try to pick the lock or unlock it with the wrong key you are told that you need the right key (implying that such exists). Another problem is that if the parser doesn't know what you're talking about, it will sometimes give you an answer that looks like it does. In one game, I tried to do the right action, using the wrong words. The message led me to believe that the ACTION had failed rather than the command, and I spent two days stuck, believing that I had already tried and rejected the correct thing. This is not to be too hard on Mr. Olsen. Considering that he's written these games from scratch without AGT, TADS, Inform, et al, he's done rather a good job. But if we compare his games to ones made using public compilers, then they suffer, even though it may be unfair to make the comparison in the first place. The atmosphere varies from horror to unintentionally comic. NIGHT OF THE WALKING DEAD at times seems more like Night of the Zombie Keystone Cops. You will often be running along with some item that you need, only to be hit over the head and have it stolen just when you get to where you would have used it. You must then chase down the creature that took it and drag him off to the crematorium to prevent him from doing it to you again. FRANKENSTEIN'S LEGACY's lack of graphic description is at times comic also. If you order the game to cut open a dead body, you are told "OK." That's it, just "OK." If you then take an organ out of the body and examine it, you are told simply "You see nothing special." Although this review has focused primarily on negatives, these are not at all bad games, and all three are well worth spending an afternoon playing. However, I would advise having a walkthrough handy before you start, and use it if you get stuck for more than, say, half an hour. These games are short stories and as such their pacing demands that the plot keep moving. If you get stuck by an arbitrary puzzle, a bad parser, or a guess-the-word problem, they become very unrewarding. If you don't, you will probably have rather a pleasant gaming experience. </div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>