Claws of Despair by Players was a game one of my friends bought when I was younger, and he pretty much hated it. I didn't though and it ended up at my house eventually.
OK so it's a text adventure, which I don't really play very often these days, and I wasn't a massive fan of them back when I was a kid either, but the few I did play I usually ended up liking. This happens to be one of them.
OK so on the grand scale of things this game doesn't have a massive production value, it suffers from scenery at certain locations that takes ages to draw in, and fills in the dithering and colours in the most sluggish, and ugly way possible. Fortunately these images are only drawn once, revisiting the location will just bring the text up.
the game also suffers from some insanely cryptic solutions to it's puzzles that to be honest I still think if Your Sinclair hadn't have printed what you're supposed to do in the tavern or the inn, nobody in the known universe would have ever finished this game. I've been ranting about this since about 1987, but SING IALS? WTF? SING IALS. How is anybody even supposed to guess that? There's no indication in the story, or any of the locations you visit that points to that answer? I don't even know if IALS is a real song? Apart from this rather unfair puzzle though the others although cryptic are quite clever in places, and can be quite satisfying when you finally work out the one random word or phrase the author was wanting you to find.
There's not really much else to say, the game is quite good, and quite well written. I've completed it back in the day, and have played through it a few more times during the age of emulation. The last time probably being in about 2013 or around about then.
Not bad at all, and it was definitely worth the £2.99 my friend paid for it haha....
