The House Jack Built

ZX Computing

Graphics 5/5

Addictivity 3/5

Overall 3/5

Thor £5.95 This program presents you with nineteen screens of cartoon quality scenes which you must discover and explore to find the hidden objects. Not content with having cats or dogs for pets Jack has a selection of very vicious monsters who wander around killing him on contact. The graphics are very well drawn and the animation is good. However the infamous Spectrum colour attributes problems which causes colours to overlap is rather evident, something which is almost unavoidable with the brightly coloured screens of this program. The actual insert instructions contain an unforgivable error, the keys mentioned are ZX;/for LRUD, in actual fact they were QWOK in my version. A joystick option was provided. Control is good. Jack moves positively and accurately. Some of the entrances and exits need specific directions to operate, you can move freely from location to location without having to collect the object first and many of the locations are ingeniously designed. I enjoyed the program for about an hour and then got bored, I have considered rerunning it from time to time but never got round to it. There doesn't appear to be enough variation in the action to make it really addictive. This would be an excellent game for those who enjoy the maze/chase type of programs with excellent graphics.

Crash

Use of Computer 73%

Graphics 78%

Playability 76%

Getting Started 76%

Addictive Qualities 67%

Value For Money 68%

Overall 73%

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Producer: Thor Memory Required: 48K Retail Price: £6.95 Language: Machine code Author: C. Kerry Third in the series of 'Jack' games from Thor, The House Jack Built is a little different from the first two Jack and the Beanstalk and Giant's Revenge in as much as it has many more screens and, more importantly, it plays differently because unlike the other two, you are not killed off by deviating from the very narrow, preset path. The game takes place in Jack's house (he's obviously not poor any more), which has several rooms, some basement rooms and caves, a garden, a large maze, a roof which then leads onto the moon, where there are several more locations to see. The object is to go around and collect all the available objects whilst avoiding the ferocious house pets (or is that pests?). The score is by percentage of collected objects. You always start off in the same room - the living room - but getting killed doesn't mean having to start over and you are returned to the 'death' location ready to start again. COMMENTS Control keys: Q/W left /right and O/K up/down Joystick: Kempston Keyboard play: quite responsive, sensible keys, and better than with joystick Use of colour: over use of colour, nevertheless, bright and cheerful Graphics: detailed, varied and smooth, sometimes hard to see characters with colour dash Sound: continuous tune and spot effects Skill levels: 1 Lives: 4 Screens: 20 plus Special features: Currah microspeech

Unlike the previous games no specific route is necessary.