TREASURE TRAP TREASURE TRAP is a strategy/arcade game written by Brian Kelly and Paul McLaughlin, published by Emerald Software, and distributed by Electronic Zoo. This addictive, great-playing game offers excellent graphics, animation, and sound, a sunken ship, a fabulous treasure hidden in over 100 rooms, keyboard control, save option, support for additional memory, and copy protection. To play the Atari ST version, the basis of this review, you'll need at least 512K, a color monitor, and a 360K disk drive. Electronic Zoo, a European developer that now has a US office, makes an auspicious debut with TREASURE TRAP. Graphics and animation are excellent throughout, and the game worked like a charm. There are all kinds of nasty underwater creatures, and the clever puzzles become ever more challenging as the game goes on. E-Zoo has at least 9 ST packages available -- Amiga and IBM machines, and in some cases the Commodore 64, are also supported -- and more are in the works. Many years ago, a boiler room exploded on the Esmeralda, a 210-foot luxury liner carrying $20 million in gold bars. The ship lies 300 feet beneath the Pacific Ocean, and, as famous salvage diver Howard Kelp, you are about to plunge into the drink to recover the treasure hoard, whose value has skyrocketed in the intervening years to $50 million. The gold bars are scattered throughout the Esmeralda's 100 rooms, but even worse is the site of the wreckage: it's a feeding ground for a menagerie of undersea creatures: crabs, eels, sharks, piranha, jellyfish, and stingrays, all of which are ravenous and deadly to the touch. The goal of TRAP is to enter a room, get the gold, and escape into the next room. You have six lives; the touch of an undersea creature will knock off a life, as will running out of air; collecting 200 gold bars earns an extra life, and when all lives are gone the game ends. Collect 50 gold bars and you can save the game. The ST screen display consists of the Esmeralda's current stateroom; it's placed diagonally onscreen, like the picture-platforms of NEVERMIND or the mansion rooms of DEVON AIRE. In the room is the helmeted Howard Kelp; there are also creatures, crates, air tanks, high-pressure bubbles that drip from the ceiling, keys, furniture, gold bars, and doors to other rooms; smart fish, when collected and later released in a room, will eat anything lethal. Along the bottom edges of the room are gold, smart fish, and lives counters; an indicator that'll flash until you've found all the gold in a room; and a bar gauge that keeps track of your air supply. When you first enter a room, you'll see a large "M" blinking in the upper left corner. Press the "M" key and you'll see a scrollable, overhead map view of the sunken Esmeralda, on which appears the rooms you've entered thus far. TRAP is controlled with the keyboard: the arrow keys direct Howard's diagonal movement; the Spacebar makes him jump. The joystick can be substituted for movement keystrokes (it helps to turn it); the button substitutes for a Spacebar jump. Keystroke D picks up and drops keys; S releases a smart fish; P pauses; F toggles sound; and R will let you redefine the keyboard. The TREASURE TRAP package comes with two 360K disks that are copy-protected, instruction manual, Reference Guide, and diver's log. For game saves, you'll need a blank disk, which TRAP will format. On booting, TRAP will detect additional memory beyond 512K -- in this instance, a 1040 with a 512K Polydisk cartridge -- and will build a RAMdisk for speedy and noiseless decompression of graphics data and faster screen loads. The graphics of TREASURE TRAP on the ST are excellent throughout: the colors are bright and the details are recognizable. Animation is notable as well: eels slither, starfish crawl, fish breathe, and Howard's air bubbles are a most useful visual reference. Getting a stack of gold bars provides the strategic element, and it's so easy that it's not easy: some of the bars are on top of stacked crates, or hidden beneath them, or in full view but guarded by overzealous sea life. Some crates float; some rise and fall or move back and forth; and still others disappear or otherwise move at the slightest touch, thus releasing whatever sea beasts might have been trapped behind them. Objects can be pushed around and climbed on so that you can reach higher objects. The underwater creatures are everywhere, and while their movement seems patterned, it changes at the slightest disturbance, such as opening a door and walking into the room. Perfectly matched strategy and arcade actions make TREASURE TRAP a most excellent game, great fun to look at and great fun to play. I wouldn't exactly call it easy but it certainly is addictive and you ought to have it. TREASURE TRAP is published by Emerald Software and distributed by Electronic Zoo.