REALM OF THE WARLOCK

 The elders of Ashton have vanished. Trouble and strife now rule the
countryside. You, veteran of many previous (and similar-sounding?) adventures,
decide to exorcise this wasteland you once called home and return the elders to
Ashton.

 This graphics adventure designed by Michael Raybaud and James Smith (reviewed
here for the Amiga) was the first game released by Incognito Software. And they
are admittedly embarrassed by it. I was told by someone at the company that if
they hadn't been contractually obligated to release it, REALM OF THE WARLOCK
might have disappeared as utterly as the old guys from Ashton.

 That would have been a shame, since it does have something to recommend it: the
puzzles. In this new age where storyline and characterization are becoming
increasingly important, direct descendants of COLOSSAL CAVE, ZORK, WIZARD AND
THE PRINCESS, and others are much harder to find. Puzzles are all this game has
on its mind, and there are plenty of them. Out of the approximately fifty
locations you'll visit, only half a dozen or so are window dressing. The rest
offer obstacles, clues, or necessary objects.

 Many of the puzzles are connected. Every object is important. Some are needed
to perform several different functions. Since you can only carry six items at a
time, and since you'll be unable to return to earlier portions of the game after
certain crucial junctures, inventory management is a juggling act of major
proportions.

 The puzzles are made all the harder by the illogic of many of them. And whil
there are clues scattered about, they can be as cryptic, or as hard to find, as
the actual solutions themselves. You must try everything everywhere (Experiment!
Experiment! Experiment!) in order to succeed.

 Also, to the game's credit, it can be loaded entirely into RAM -- that is, if
you have 1MB or more available. WARLOCK offers a number of shortcut macros, and
the ability to chain together a series of directional commands to move you
quickly across its landscape. It will save games to a second disk drive,
although the documentation doesn't reveal this. Just type the designator of your
second drive (DF1:, DF2:, etc.) before the filename under which you want to save
the game.

 Phone support was prompt and friendly. And the game even begins with an
anti-drug message in an unexpected display of social conscience.

 Why would Incognito want to disown such a challenging game? There _is_ a
definite downside. First of all, the parser is limited and cranky. Secondly, the
game's text strings are full of distracting typos, misspellings, and
illiteracies of every sort. This combination can be deadly when, at one poin the
program only accepts a command that's an incorrect use of the language. Room
descriptions are often confused with characters inhabiting the rooms, resulting
in the display of some very bizarre text. And every time you save a game, you
get the message "Gave Saved." (Sigh.)

 WARLOCK's graphics are crudely drawn, almost childlike, and of little help in
solving the puzzles. They can be turned off, and this is essential at a couple
points where the text scrolls right out of the window before you can read it.
There is no sound. There appear to be several bugs that can crash the game. The
only one that is repeatable is acknowledged by Incognito, but there are no plans
to fix it. The correct input is necessary to get you past it.

 The packaging stuffs the disk up against a cheap slab of crumbling styrofoam
that can jam it, or your drive. Clean the disk thoroughly before use!

 So, the bottom line has to be this: If you are looking for an extremely
challenging, puzzle-oriented graphics adventure, and _if_ you can put up with
the annoying idiosyncrasies of the parser, text, and overall design, you might
want to give REALM OF THE WARLOCK a try. But if your irritation threshold is
low, beware.

 REALM OF THE WARLOCK is published by Incognito Software.

*****DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253