A simple, small wordsearch puzzle which may keep you occupied for ten minutes or so. I was compelled to try this one out since I like anything with a maritime theme. On loading the program up from the Outlet issue 101 disk menu, it is pleasing to read that this is number five in a series of puzzles. I have not yet hunted down the other titles in this series, but I'm guessing they'd also be found somewhere on the "Outlet" series of MGT +D disks.
Starting the game reveals a nice enough yellow screen with a 10x5 grid of black, bold-typed letters in which are contained 13 maritime words for the player to find. Maritime terminology covers a whole range of obscure jargon and so I was initially concerned that I may not recognise some of the words because of this. However, my fears were quickly allayed on finding most of the words pretty rapidly. In fact, all of the nautical words are in common usage to the layman and would even be immediately recognised by a lifelong landlubber. The puzzle whilst a relaxing diversion, could indeed be completed by a child.
The method of word selection is via arrow keys and space to locate the first letter of the identified word. You then type the word in directly so the program can check your answer. You also must press a number 1-8 to specify the direction of the word you think you have just found. This method works well enough.
As for criticisms, well the keyboard response leaves a bit to be desired and is quite sluggish. Quick keypresses are not always registered, leading the player to adopt the habit of holding keys down for a second when navigating around the puzzle grid. Pressing 'H' for 'H'elp was also a little misleading for me. I thought it would give instructions on how to play the game. Instead it reveals all of the answers which I didn't really want to see. Oops! Perhaps this should have been renamed to "Show word list" or something, instead of "Help".
Also, the message displayed on finding a word that doesn't happen to be in the list can be a bit confusing as it reads "That word cannot be made from that point and in that direction" when clearly it can. I think that the message should really read "Word not found in list" in that particular case. However, these pedantic gripes of the implementation do not overly spoil this quick'n'cheerful wordsearch puzzle. Overall, for me it scores a 3. Maybe on a rainy day I'll complete the other games in the same series albeit with no great sense of urgency.
