Producer: Dorcas Software
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £7.95
Language: Machine code
Author: Chris Dorrell

Dorcasia was a pleasant fertile land until the wizard Zendos cast the spell of darkness, plunging the country into perpetual gloom, forcing all the citizens of the tiny principality to pledge allegiance to him. A hero must take on the twelve different adventures and find and destroy the twelve runic hour glasses hidden deep within his magical castle, releasing the months and returning Dorcasia to the natural forces of the seasons. To protect the hour glasses and keep their runic inscriptions secret, Zendos has placed them in twelve separate rooms, each linked to an exterior gateway by a devious route. Each adventure has unique spells and problems to ensure a new challenge is provided on each occasion. The game features full animation, sentence input, sound effects and save game facilities to tape and microdrive.

When the game loads you are at the start of adventure one. At any time you can switch to the start of a different adventure by entering, for example, 'adventure eight'. Status (or ?) gives information regarding the adventure you are in; e.g. Adventure 1, Strength 25, Provisions 25, Luck 10, Performance 80 (how much of the adventure you have completed). Further information regarding what you are carrying, the spells you know and what you are wearing is also detailed. You can wear one item on your head and one on your body; if you remove something you will then be carrying it. You begin each adventure with a supply of provisions eaten in quantities from 1 - 12 to increase your strength, e.g. EAT THREE items of food along the way replenishes strength depleted during fighting and running.

Vocabulary is surprisingly particular as you must type in the exact letters to make up the required words with only a few stock abbreviations for left (l), right (r), up (u), down (d), passage (p) and quickly (q). However, editing makes full use of the Spectrum cursor movement and delete functions which greatly facilitates entry. ENTER repeats the last command even after starting to type something else if this is first deleted. Input can be, and often must be, quite lengthy and involved, e.g. ATTACK THE GUARD WITH THE MIGHTY AXE and UNLOCK THE DOOR WITH THE GOLDEN KEY. The program will accept all words it has displayed.

Whenever you meet a creature its strength and yours are displayed in a pennant at the top left of the screen. If a creature is very strong you will need more than your bare hands. Fighting is seldom the only option; often befriending a creature or casting an appropriate spell marks the way forward. To cast a spell you must have found it first and which therefore will appear in your knowledge list in the current adventure. Using charms and lucky items may improve your luck.

The Runes of Zendos is a very graphically entertaining adventure with smooth, scrolling animation sending your character left and right through passageways, up and down steps of ladders and striking blows in battle with the various zombies, skeletons, werewolves and all manner of exotic assailants. Much of the language is atypical of the arcade-adventure scene with l and r keys chosen for movement and TAKE with no GET option. The problems are logical, more so than in many text adventures, and the game is certain to take some time to complete as three hours were needed for the first of twelve sections. Although the game stands up as an adventure in its own right it is the superb animation which will be the more immediate attraction of what is a very fine game.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: quite easy
Graphics: scrolling graphics with character animation
Presentation: good
Input facility: allows sentences. Vocabulary small and a little unorthodox
Response: reasonable, scrolling graphics appear a bit slow when in a hurry

THE RUNES OF ZENDOS
Dorcas Software
Memory: 48K
Price: £7.95

Dorcasia, like Camelot, was a fairly well regulated place until the evil Zendos threw the main switch and plunged the country into perpetual darkness. The 'spirit' of each month of the year was trapped in a secret rune and then tucked away in the depths of his castle.

As might be expected you must search the castle and destroy the hour glasses which hold the months. There is also a runic inscription on each glass and you must decipher that to exorcise the spell on the month.

As there are 12 months there are 12 separate quests, all of which interlink to some extent. To solve the full puzzle you must break a number of codes and the game becomes more difficult as you progress.

Like its predecessor, The Oracle's Cave, the game features animated graphics. The explorer walks and climbs from location to location encountering various monsters and magical objects. Those are finely drawn in attractive colour and are an improvement on the Cave's rather monochromatic pictures.

Text can be used as in a standard adventure and the buffer will accept reasonably complex sentences, including some adverbs.

The Runes of Zendos is carefully produced and will have considerable appeal to amateur cryptologists.

DIRTY DOZEN

MAKER: Dorcas
FORMAT: cassette
PRICE: £7.95

Sequel to Oracle's Cave, perhaps the first animated adventure, Zendos is a series of twelve adventures working on two different levels. On the simpler level, it presents a series of problems to be solved as your man roams corridors, climbs ladders and confronts various animate and inanimate obstacles. The same problems recur in different sequences in each adventure so, in theory, once you've solved them in one adventure, you can deal with them pretty handily in all the rest. However, on another level, your task is harder. At the heart of each adventure is an hour glass in which Zendos has imprisoned a month, disrupting his neighbours' lives no little. To release them, eventually getting to the final screen, you must translate the runic inscription on each hour glass. In other words, what you get is a neat, if fairly simple, animated graphics adventure combined with a rather less simple job of code-breaking.

ZENDOS

MICRO: Spectrum 48K
PRICE: £7.95
FORMAT: Cassette
SUPPLIER: Dorcas Software, 3 The Oasis, Glenfield, Leics LE3 8QS

The Runes of Zendos is an interesting and intriguing new game that comes more in the arcventure category.

Using the Spell of Darkness, the evil wizard Zendos has cast the country of Dorcasia into eternal night until all pledge allegiance to him. The 'spirits' of the twelve months have each been trapped by Zendos within the Tempus Runes or Runic Hour Glasses and placed within his labyrinthine castle.

Once the game has loaded you can effectively choose twelve different starting points as each 'month' has been hidden within a different group of rooms. You can change adventures at any time simply by typing in the number of the one you wish to move to.

Each screen is a high-res picture of a room, complete with animated characters representing you and, in most cases, a monster. There are large numbers of creatures and objects in each game and, although they are the same from game to game, they are 'shuffled round' so that a monster you'll meet at the end of adventure 10 might turn up near the start of adventure two.

The game has combat but this is not in real time so you have a chance to think what to do, say and so on. Simple but full sentences are understood and some abbreviations are allowed. A full dictionary of verbs or prepositions is given which is very useful. Saves are allowed on tape or microdrive.

Fighting is animated in a most amusing way, showing you and your opponent taking little 'digs' at one another until only one remains. Your respective strengths are shown and the first reduced to zero is dead.

Some items you find in the castle aid your attacks or help you get rid of the monsters without violence. Some cunning traps are also included, like exploding clocks and hypnotising mirrors. Lost strength can be regained by eating your provisions or some of the items found in the castle.

Now and again an object will add to your luck or reveal a mysterious spell or cryptic clue to aid you later on. Some objects carry mystic runes which must eventually be translated if you are to succeed in 'freeing' the months.

As a start I'd advise you to get as far as you can in each of the twelve adventures to build up a list of the creatures, objects, and spells to be found. Even being killed isn't all bad - you often get a clue as to how to deal with the monster after you're dead!

Overall, I found the game good fun and quite addictive. I'm sure there are many, many hours of play before you find the final solution.

PRICE: £7.95
GAME TYPE: Adventure

When Dorcas brought out their game The Oracle's Cave, it was very impressive. A fully animated adventure, with clear graphics, not tiny little characters! Very original, very good.

Their follow-up is less impressive, for the idea of the animated adventure has now been taken to greater lengths than Dorcas had imagined. The Runes of Zendos sees the player wandering around one of twelve different castle layouts, searching for a Runic Hour glass. Twelve separate adventures, although the problems which you encounter, and the characters you meet will be similar in each one.

In each location your options are limited. If you face unfriendly opponents without the weapon necessary to destroy them instantly you will have to fight them. The outcome relies on your strength and your weapons, but also on luck. Fights with a little luck involved are exciting, fights where too much of a random element is involved are frustrating and ultimately boring. Those in The Runes of Zendos fall into the latter of these two categories.

The graphics and animation are good, but not spectacular. The problems are monotonous: find the correct objects in the right order and use them in the right way. The fight scenes are tedious. Runes of Zendos suffers more than most games from the rivalry of other programs released at the same time. It is a moderately enjoyable adventure game, but is certainly not the best of its type on the Spectrum market this Christmas.

Produced for the 48K Spectrum by Dorcas Software.

48K Spectrum
£7.95
Dorcas Software

Zendos is an animated graphics and text adventure with some similarities to its predecessor, Oracle's Cave. If you liked that, then chances are you will enjoy this one.

The screen is divided into two, the top half displaying a side-on view of part of a room which scrolls horizontally or vertically in response to your chosen movement. The lower half is used textual commands and responses. Commands can range from the terse - L for go left - to the verbose - attack the guard with the mighty axe.

You are shown as a small white-clad figure whose mission it is to seek our and destroy the wicked wiazrd Zendos. He has separately imprisoned the spirit of each month - you must find and release all 12 spirits. Each auction of the castle is split into several chambers.

Since each of the spirits is located in a different section, the program kindly lets you move instantaneously from section to section with a single command. Effectively, you get to play 12 connected sub-adventures.

Apart from you own walkabouts, the animation mostly comes from simply stylised battles with many of the characters you meet. These characters, as in Oracle's Cave, are solidly presented an imaginatively designed. As well as fighting, cracking runic codes and casting spells are other major activities.

As an animated adventure, Zendos works out very well. If you want a change from text only adventures, this should fill the bill.