Planet of Death was one of the first text adventures for the 16k Speccy, converted from the ZX81. As such, it's very short (completable in 5 minutes once you know how), and has a limited two word verb noun parsar. Having said that, it's got atmosphere. Apart from one particularly evil puzzle it's a great adventure for beginners or for the younger adventurer.
Review by Matt_B on 13 May 2010 (Rating: 3)
One of the earliest releases for the Spectrum was this port of a text adventure originally written for the ZX81; replete with text in all capitals, it's not exactly an enhanced port, but it's written in machine code and quite fast and otherwise well presented. It, alongside three other adventures from Artic, eventually found its way into the official software catalogue Sinclair Research in early 1983.
It's quite a small game, with just a smidgen over 20 locations, but it's no pushover. The map is extremely convoluted and you can rarely track back from going in one way by its opposite compass direction. There's also the obligatory maze for a game of this vintage, although at least the game offers a helpful clue as to how to get out of it.
Another frustration is the game's limited vocabulary. The old adventure standards of Look and Take aren't accepted, at least not in their usual contexts; I remember it taking a while before I figured out that you had to Get objects and R (for Redescribe?) would tell you where you were.
The game's plot veers from the mundane to the ridiculous, with most of the map not exactly resembling the mysterious alien planet the title suggests, yet with some downright illogical puzzles. You'll need your disco skills to get past a forcefield, for instance.
Whilst the game was certainly something of a classic for its time, it's not aged gracefully and looks poor next to even some of the more mundane Quilled games that arrived in the following years. More recent converts to adventure games will certainly wonder what all the fuss was about here.
