by Trevor Hall
Yes, I don't appreciate at all when an adventure doesn't let you examine things properly, and just doesn't understand this psychological need of mine, or tell sme that there's nothing interesting to see, or "everything seems normal to me" or other pathetic excuses. BUT this flaw can theorically be compensated with other redeeming features. Twin Kingdom Valley seems to be an example of when this theory meets reality. It's got fast drawning and, if blocky [a clear port], hypercolourful screens in every location [ok, many are re-used], lots and lots of items to pick up and use, plenty of places to explore, extreme playability. It's not one of those adventure where you're immediately blocked by a puzzling puzzle, or by INCOMMUNICABILITY problem with the parser, you can wander at your pleasure for a good while, discover new places and find things. Oh, the display is ok too, because the ink is nicely differentiated, on a black background: your lines are yellow, inventory is green, description and answers are in white [except when the program doesn't understand, which is black ink highlighted in yellow], and what about the magenta dotted lines that separate each cross talk? cutish! Unluckily I can't type at the speed I'd like, because in Twin Kingdom Valley typing prowess is not much appreciated. But game itself is fast. And you have a lot of options to determine how you prefer your graphical and text description. So, although I didn't really deepen this game, and I won't because I'm not interested in tolkenian fantasy and such, all in all it seems a fine example of good 1984's adventuring. Just forget about examining things.
4/5
