Producer: Automata
Retail Price: £6.00
Author: Jon Smith

Automata made their name with an unusual adventure, Pimania, and with the first serial cartoon advertisements exhibiting their own unique good humour and lightheartedness - a refreshing interlude from the unremitting commercial onslaught emanating from other software houses. Pimania has achieved notoriety, and lately, newsworthiness over the extreme lengths many will take to recover the Golden Sundial of Pi from its depository deep within a long forgotten oceanic nuclear bunker. I've even known some to go so far as to play the adventure.

Crusoe is based upon the novel by Daniel Defoe and features free music on the flip side by Dan Defoe and the Castaways but turns out to be a desert island discs spoof with passable musical adverts for Automata products. The star of the show has a high pitched voice with an enchanting Scottish lilt. Crusoe is stranded on a remote island in Yorkshire (Hull?) in the year 1684, with nothing but an empty stomach, a bottle of granny's patent elixir and the shorts he stands up in. The aim is to return home and steer the litigation against your travel agent through court.

The game, following an attractive loading screen, is very colourful and is dominated by the playing area on the left which depicts the palms, islands, fruit trees, cacti, monsters and treasures that will help or hinder you in your quest. To the right is The Logg with Day, Time, Weather, Wind, Food & Drink, Vigour, Elixir and Items down one side opposite which is first, the letter which must not run too far up the alphabet for safety's sake, and then a comment like 'and I feel fine'. This seventeenth century notation adds an authentic flavour to the proceedings and no doubt conceals any propensity towards misspelling. Prepare yourself for the culture shock by learning these few words - fitte, wether, foode, rekt, werie.

Along the bottom goes your input and the comment it elicits above. The cassette cover amusingly keeps the tenuous links with the mainstream adventure by calling I (for Inventory) 'What have I got?', SCORE 'Will I survive?' and D, Describe. You move around by pressing the N, S, E, and W keys, waiting for the response each time but surely cursor key movement would have been much better and have removed a major irritation from the game. To be fair movement is facilitated by holding down ENTER which allows you continuous movement in the direction previously specified. When negotiating obstacles the manoeuvres of the monsters about the screen can be a distraction as you cannot progress further until the monster has moved. The delay can disrupt the rhythm of your input resulting in a load of nonsense e.g., EEN when you thought you had separately moved east twice, then north. This shortcoming is compounded by the absence of DELETE and so whatever gibberish you end up with must be entered. As is more typical of a Yorkshire island than one in the desert, rain stops play.

If you can dodge the assorted monsters, crocodiles, spiders, serpents, etc., and find some fruit trees, and perhaps a pool of water, you will find yourself crossing into new maps where you might well find a dead end. Often the way out is to press the Blue key (1) and enter the sea where you can swim along merrily with only the serpents posing any threat. The sea washes against the bottom of the map and is useful for crossing map boundaries quickly until you meet a construction forcing you onto land or serpent-infested waters. Here lies a minor bug. If you tire of swimming, or if the serpent should get you, and you die, you continue with your next life where you left off. However, you set off again in the Red key (2) land mode. The solution is simple enough - press the Blue key once more.

When you come to a sticky end all is not lost by any means. You have twenty or so lives left - there's that Automata humour again. Your rejuvenation is effected on imbibing the elixir. The next time you die you look forward 'to the musical accompaniment with the suitably sad end; a dud note.

Crusoe is a very different type of adventure that will take a lot of playing before that which you are supposed to achieve becomes clear. It will appeal to that group of players who find text adventures too demanding and unexciting, and like their games served up with a sense of humour.

Difficulty: How long is a piece of string?
Graphics: Shows map of island on which your character Crusoe is moved from block to block
Presentation: Very good
Input Facility: No delete, irritating
Response: Fast but replies often confusing
Special Features: The game is difficult to categorize, not a traditional style adventure

Roger: Like most well-written adventure programs, Crusoe gives the impression of literacy and intelligence to the humble ZX Spcccy and, as someone who badly needs his severely flagging ego flattered by any means possible, I have to admit enjoying this desert island experience.

Screen format includes both a parchment logbook and one of a number of maps charting the castaway's position. The action involves shuffling the poor old soul round the island, feeding and watering him when required, and looking for all the available 'finds' to assist his survival. Apart from not letting him starve to death, the player also has to steer him around a selection of static and mobile hazards, as well as correctly answering his questions; he even responds in a like manner to unprintable abuse!

Gradually, his well-being improves and his lifestyle becomes more civilised - but how on earth do you get to find Man Friday? Well, he can stay in the undergrowth for all I care!

The complications, vaguely intellectual demands on the player and wittily detailed graphics, are at the core of Crusoe's ability to amuse. 4/5 HIT

David: Jerky graphics and poor sound did not endear me to this desert island disaster - all the elements are there... it just doesn't quite work. 2/5 MISS

Ron: Well. I'm not quite sure what the idea of the game really is, but I spent ages trying to find the mysterious Man Friday. Has anyone out there found him yet? 3/5 HIT

CRUSOE CASTAWAY

Memory: 48K
Price: £6

No prizes for guessing the theme of Crusoe from Automata.

A map of the island takes up half the screen, and includes objects which may be useful to Crusoe, who is shown as a small figure. Various status indicators are also shown.

Crusoe's task is to assemble a decent set of living equipment without running into thorns or boulders and reducing his strength. If Automata's eccentric style appeals, you will enjoy the game, though the crabbed script and minute screen detail are likely to irritate even the most persistent.

GOOD GRIEF - FOOTPRINTS!

MAKER: Automata UK
FORMAT: cassette
PRICE: £6.00

Normally, my loudly voiced opinions are an unwavering edifice to the obstinate. I'm not one to hedge my bets. Crusoe however has caused much rewriting in the Keaton notepad. Initially I thought it an overly ambitious and largely inaccessible graphic adventure, noteworthy only for its ornate presentation. Then, while dispensing the usual barrage of expletives (a.k.a. the final option) I stumbled across MOST unexpected retorts. As you might imagine I warmed to the adventure immediately. in fact, this interchange become something of a game within a game. The prog's foul file is surprisingly large and a quite inordinate amount of time was spent plumbing its depths. Modesty forbids me from revealing more.

Interest duly rekindled, I went on to further explore the island, and was eventually won over. The presentation is superb. The display is split between a representation of the island and a status log, which reveals, in archaic script, your current physical condition, the time and day and even the prevailing weather!

As Crusoe, your objective is to escape from your sandy atoll and return to Blighty. On hand is much useful junk (violins, dead birds and doorknobs) and naturally enough Man Friday also lurks nearby. The action itself is played out in real-time via the map display. Standard Save Game facilities are available although I was rather miffed to discover that Quit only re-energises your supplies and doesn't return you to a start position. Get yourself in a pickle and you've no choice but to kill the power! An overly dramatic response option I'm sure you'll agree. Still, who ever said life on a desert island was a bunch of beefjerky? No I.

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K
PRICE: £6.00

ATTRACTIVE

After this double dose of Robin Hood, the White Wizard found himself once more confronted by another 'arcade adventure', this time from Automata of Pi-man fame.

Automata's latest offering, called Crusoe, has a very attractive display as you move a little figure round a desert island avoiding spiders and sea-serpents.

The right half of the screen is a status display giving you the day, time, weather details, inventory, and your state of health. The character set has been attractively redefined to imitate the scrawling handwriting of Robinson Crusoe.

On the left of the screen is a bird's eye view of the portion of the island you happen to be on at the time, complete with all manner of objects and a number of very amusing spiders. The spiders nip from tree to tree and hide in wait for you their bite is deadly so you have to watch your step.

At the bottom of the screen is a scrolling text window for your commands and the computer's responses. Unfortunately the pre-release version I was sent of Crusoe contained a number of bugs which made it difficult for me to get very far.

However the White Wizard has to admit that the presentation of the game was extremely attractive and unlike some 'arcade adventures' there was a considerable atmosphere generated as you wander about exploring lagoons and eating 'frute'.

TRADITIONAL

Crusoe is much nearer to the traditional adventure format than, say, Gisburne's Castle. You can enter proper textual commands rather than just pressing buttons and your commands get a verbal as well as a graphic response from the computer. For once the White Wizard was prepared to grant an 'arcade adventure' a place on his shelf.

CRUSOE MAROONED

MICRO: Spectrum 48K
PRICE: (not supplied)
FORMAT: Cassette
SUPPLIER: Automata UK Ltd, 27 Highland Road, Portsmouth, Hampshire, PO4 9DA

As Robinson Crusoe on an island which is not all that deserted, you must find seventy five treasures. Commands include single letter, single word and two word. Two things make Crusoe a little different from many adventures. Firstly it uses a split screen with three windows to display Crusoe's current status and the input/output messages and the current graphic screen. The island is divided into a number of such screens and by moving off the edge of one, you enter the next. Each screen occupies about a third of the Spectrum's total screen and is covered with graphics representing objects, creatures, and locations. Unfortunately no guidance is given as to what each means, until you get there, so your exploration is something like Crusoe's - a voyage of discovery.

The graphics are too cluttered to interpret easily, but they do give a very attractive map. This leads me to the second aspect of the game - the 'feel' of it. Automata have something of a reputation for quirky games, and Crusoe has its own distinctive atmosphere. No expense has been spared (well, some might have) to give a program which looks, feels and even spells like a seventeenth or eighteenth century document. Of course it is difficult to know what a two hundred year old computer program would look like (historians have not done much research in this area) so Crusoe settles for a historical atmosphere rather than accuracy, but the overall impression is very favourable.

The combination of puzzle adventure and graphic adventure, together with this eighteenth century flavour, make this an interesting game. It plays well, though I found it very easy to get killed (funnily enough, this seems to happen in a number of games I play).

If you are looking for something a bit beyond the conventional adventure, though based on the traditional structure, this is one to try.

48K Spectrum
Adventure
£6.00
Automata

In this graphics adventure you take the part of the well-known castaway trudging round a desert island with 75 items to track down. The program is nicely presented with several screens for you to explore. William Bones has left plenty of clues strewn around the place for you to solve. The text appears in Treasure Island script, with suitably rustic messages.