Reviews

Reviews for Gablota (#1923)

Review by Digital Prawn on 28 Apr 2011 (Rating: 4)

Intriguing Polish-language text-only game where you have to buy and sell used cars at a profit, using various nefarious methods like "clocking" in order to increase profits.

It has what I take to be the Polish sense of humour in bucketloads, with some hilarious outcomes like ending up in court due to fraudulent business practices with a "judge that looks like Dracula" or vandals attacking your business or burning it down.

You can even choose where to set up your business, like in a dodgy side-street or an industrial area. The cars can have all sorts of problems like the exhaust pipe falling off, or a missing engine.

Technically, the game is written entirely in BASIC, yet uses a turbo loader that somehow manages (psychologically at least) to seem slower than a normal load. Also, it's tricky to hack as the variables are loaded separately from the main program. so RUN or CLEAR wipes everything. The computed control statements make the code almost impossible to follow and on top of that there's only about 1K of RAM remaining.

But from a player's viewpoint, you just have to find a game slightly zany when it initially asks you if you are married and then calls you an idiot if you say you are.

Another peculiarity is that the game uses British Pounds for currency even though it is presumably set in Poland.

I just give it 4 out of 5 for pure quirkiness though!