Transylvanian Tower

ZX Computing

Dermot Reidy

READERS REVIEWS Taking pen in hand, you tell us what the public really think about the goods on sale. TRANSYLVANIAN TOWER Richard Shepherd Software Dermot Reidy I am glad I didn't buy this game but got a present of it. It would have been a shame to waste good money on it. After having played so many good and enjoyable games on my Spectrum, this one was the worst offering I have yet seen and must be a new low for Spectrum software. You begin the game by finding yourself in Count Kreepie's castle. You have to find your way through five mazes, kill Count Kreepie and find his treasure trove. Along the way, you have to kill man-eating, blood-sucking bats. A certain amount of bats have to be killed before you can move onto the next maze. Sounds interesting, doesn't it? When you first load the program, there is no screen, and thus you have no nice picture to look at. There is nothing wrong with this and it does save time when you're loading your program. The instructions in the program are quite good. Then, the worst happens. You have to wait approximately two minutes before you move into the first maze. The program is generating the maze during this time. After getting through a maze, you have to wait another two minutes before you get onto the next maze. And I thought computers were supposed to speed things up (more fool me). The maze isn't too difficult to get through and a map can of it can be got each time you kill a bat, but the game draws the map line by line and this takes about 20 seconds. Once again, you're sitting down, twiddling your thumbs. The graphics of the maze are pretty ordinary and at times, the windows on the side wall are out of perspective, giving the program a very amateurish look. You only get one life and so if you're killed, you have to wait another two minutes before you can start again. If you're a person with plenty of time to be looking at blank computer screens, this game is for you. Transylvanian Tower also probably suits players with a heart condition and is liable to be a good way to put the kids to sleep at night. But if you're a space invader/Krazy Kong fan, stay well away from this. Transylvanian Tower is priced at £6.50 and comes from Richard Shepherd Software, [redacted].

ZX Computing

Phil Garratt

SEARCHING OUT COUNT DRACULA IS NO EASY TASK AS PHIL GARRATT WILL TESTIFY. Transylvanian Tower is the latest of Richard Shepherd's adventure games for the 48K Spectrum. Count Dracula's lair contains no less than 500 rooms, and your task is to find your way through them, kill the Count, and steal from his secret treasure trove. The tower is on five levels, each of which is made up of a ten by ten maze. You start in the top left corner, and you have to reach the room at the bottom right which contains the 'transporter' (what's wrong with stairs?!) to take you to the next level. As you enter each room, you are given a three-dimensional view of the walls and any doors leading off. You may also come across a useful object such as a ring that lets you walk through walls or a sword for killing bats with. Movement is done using the cursor keys, '5' and '8' for left and right, '7' to go forward, and '6' turns you 90 degrees anti-clockwise (so pressing it twice turns you right round without leaving the room). NECKING IN THE TOWER Once you are past the opening titles of the program, complete with sneak preview of the Count, you have to wait for over two minutes for the random maze to be set up. Your quest starts at level 1, which is the dungeon level, and contains neither hazards nor objects. Pressing 'H' at any time displays a floor plan, which is built up gradually line by line and takes over 30 seconds to complete. Your position and that of the exit are then shown, and after 10 seconds you are returned to the room display. Eventually, you reach the exit and you then have another two minutes plus wait while the second level maze is worked out. You cross level 2 in the same way as level 1, but this time you have to cope with the vampire bats. These little monsters fly randomly around the ceiling of many of the rooms, and you either have to kill them or run away. Linger too long and the pain in the neck they give you is fatal! You have a gun to shoot them with, but only 10 bullets (although you may come across more scattered in the maze). When you fire, a rather messy line is drawn vertically up the middle of the screen, and you have to hit the bat with it. You cannot aim your shot, so you have to rely on the bat flying into the right position (or wrong position from the bat's point of view). There are two other important things concerning bats. Firstly, you have to kill a certain number of them before you can progress to the next level (20 on the second; 30 on the third, and 40 on the fourth). Secondly, their radar system is a bit defective, so they all carry a floor plan so that they can find their way around the castle. This means that every time you kill a bat, you have a chance to find out where you are and where you want to go. Also on level 2 and above are objects which might be of some use against the bats. There are eight other items apart from the ring and sword I mentioned earlier. There is a cloak that stops bats attacking, an apple that will speed you to the next level, a knife and a dagger, a floor plan, and finally three items without which no vampire movie would be complete: a mirror, a clove of garlic and a silver cross. You can only carry up to three objects at any one time though. Levels 3 and 4 are like level 2, except that the bats are even harder to kill. If you reach level 5, then you get the chance to confront Count Dracula himself. Only one of the objects is an effective weapon against him, and I never lived long enough to find out which! FANGS AIN'T WHAT THEY USED TO BE Provided you have been playing the game for at least 30 minutes, you can save the game onto tape. The entire 36K of the program is saved rather than just the data. After using the SAVE feature, as soon as the current game finishes (win or lose) the program does a NEW and you have to load from tape to play again. The same applies to the game you just saved to tape. I'm afraid I think that Richard Shepherd has a rather too high opinion of his own program if he expects many people to spend 3 minutes loading from tape, then 2 minutes waiting for the game to set itself up, only to have the program NEW if the SAVE feature is used. Unlike Richard Shepherd's earlier adventures, Transylvanian Tower does not send any output to the printer. The program is entirely written in BASIC, but if you attempt to break the program, for example, to dump the floor plan to the printer, that also causes the program to NEW. This is a reasonable game for the very patient, but would be greatly improved if the maze were set up by machine code. The graphics are the best so far from Richard Shepherd, but still only adequate rather than inspired. It also struck me that this would be a desperately hard game to win. If you do manage it, I suggest you treat yourself to a Bloody Mary! Transylvanian Tower is priced at £6.50 from Richard Shepherd Software, [redacted].

Some sample screen illustrations from the program, Transylvanian Tower. Instructions are provided along with graphic displays of some of the rooms you may visit. Below is a map of your progress around the Count's tower, but if you encounter the dreaded Count Dracula you'd better make sure you're a little more prepared than the unlucky player who last saw the above on-screen!

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Keith Campbell

What's in a package? How much are you tempted by a large attractive box in a plastic bubble, covered with a design suggesting fantasy and excitement within? Do you ever suspect that you may have had to pay a few pounds less had that same cassette been more plainly wrapped? The ultimate test, of course, is in the invisible magnetic impressions on that cassette. Here we have two games. One is lavishly packaged in a beautifully illustrated box, and quite expensive; the other supplied on a proprietary cassette with a duplicated instruction sheet, and at the low end of the price spectrum. No pun intended! Transylvanian Tower is billed as a 'spine-chilling new Adventure' for the 48k Spectrum. Unfortunately it is not. There are five levels in the tower, and the player's objective is to reach the top, kill Count Dracula, and raid his treasure trove. Each level consists of a maze, and each has different characteristics. A floor plan of the level can be called up, with increasing difficulty as one nears the top. Objects, many of which have magical properties, may be picked up if seen by typing "P", but only three may be carried simultaneously. The same is screened graphically in colour and bats, which are a hazard, can be seen flapping around. Sufficient must be killed to enable you to move up a level. How do you kill the bats to get to Dracula? Would you believe with a laser gun? This might a reasonable maze game, but good Adventure it is not. From Richard Shepherd Software, this is disappointing after Shaken not Stirred. For £6.50 you will get the game on a TDK cassette, and a fairly comprehensive two-page description of how to load and play the game.

Personal Computer News

Lasting Appeal 4/5

Playability 3/5

Use Of Machine 5/5

Overall Value 5/5

Mike Gerrard 5/5

AMAZING MAZES NAME: Transylvanian Tower SYSTEM: 48K Spectrum PRICE: £6.50 PUBLISHER: Richard Shepherd Software [redacted] FORMAT: Cassette LANGUAGE: Basic OTHER VERSIONS: None OUTLETS: Mail Order, WH Smith and other dealers BAT BATTLE Hot on the wheels of the original text-only Adventure games, where you merrily tapped in 'North,' 'South,' or more frequently 'Help,' have come the 3D Adventures, where you can actually see where you are, and the directions you can move in. What next, one wonders... being dragged from the keyboard and pushed out into the real world? I for one don't want to get any closer to a Transylvanian dungeon than this simulation, thank you very much. OBJECTIVES Each of the five floors of the tower in this game is made up of a hundred rooms. Naturally, you start in the dungeon, on the bottom floor, and as far from the exit as possible. On this first level there are no objects to hunt for, and no bats or other nasties to fend off, so it's a good way of getting used to the movements you make with the arrow keys. Your objective is to make your way safely up to the fifth level for your encounter with Count Kreepie who bears a startling resemblance to Sir Keith Joseph, so this is not recommended to those of a nervous disposition. FIRST IMPRESSIONS As with most games of this type, the instructions are fairly detailed. But everything is fully explained on the cassette insert, and then again on the screen when the tape is LOADed. IN PLAY Once you've been set down in the dungeon you use the arrow keys to take you from room to room through whichever dark door you choose. The '6' key will turn you through 90 degrees, so pressing it twice turns you round completely. But it's only when you get out of the dungeon that your troubles really begin. You start finding objects, such as garlic, a cloak, a dagger and a sword, and can carry up to three of these, but you also begin to encounter bats, which flit about the top of the room while you try to shoot them down. You could easily leave them and move on to the next room, but in the first place only bats carry maps from here on in, and in the second place you have to kill a certain number before you can move to the next floor. If you reach the exit without the required tally of dead bats, you'll be moved back to a random room on the same level. This is not a good thing. VERDICT Transylvanian Tower is an excellent game at a reasonable price, and should stand the test of repeated playings, despite the drawback of the slow maze construction. I couldn't progress beyond Level 3, where I was seen off by an unexpected vampire while I wasn't carrying a clove of garlic.

Sinclair User

Gilbert Factor 7/10

GET YOUR TEETH INTO THIS ONE You must hunt down and destroy Count Dracula in this new adventure game, Transylvanian Tower, for the 48K Spectrum. There are five levels to Dracula's castle and as you move around each floor the rooms you enter are shown in 3D. The first level of the castle is a simple maze. At any time you can call-up a floor plan with your present position and destination marked on it. When you reach the exit you ran go up to the more dangerous level two. Vampire bats swoop to attack you and you must kill them with your gun. Your shots must be accurate as you have only 10 bullets. You can also kill bats with the objects you will find scattered about the place. On level two you can ask for a floor plan only when you kill a bat. To get through this level you need to kill plenty of bats. Level three is the same as level two but the bats must be shot through the heart: level four is the same as level three. Level five is the most important and dangerous one. Here you must hunt the dreaded Count. Only one of the objects which you have collected from the other floors will kill him. The rest are useless but you are not told which is which. When you have killed Dracula you are given a map on which is marked the location of his treasure. You must still tread carefully as the bats are furious with you for killing their master. This addictive game is available from Richard Shepard Software, [redacted]. It costs £6.50.

Read it at Sinclair User Magazine Online