Earthshock

Sinclair User

Overall 10/10

Gary Rook 10/10

Label: Eighth Day Author: In-house Price: £3.99 Memory: 48K Reviewer: Gary Rook Eighth Day Software is a small house devoted to publishing high quality but cheap Quilled adventures - and I'm glad to say this is one of its best, even if the tape I got would only load the text - only version of this, their latest game. Even without graphics, Earthshock is unquestionably one of the best adventures I have seen this year. That sounds like a pretty bald statement, but any game which marries inventiveness of plot with incredibly rich and atmospheric location descriptions just has to get my vote for the tops. I quote: 'Small clouds of dark dust fall from above and drift slowly through the air down into the depths of the shaft, caught momentarily in the glare of your lamp, illuminated by the light as if alive, they disappear and are gone, spiralling down into the stifling darkness.' Now you and I both know that most adventure houses would have been content with: 'You see a shaft. It is deep. It is dark. It is stifling'. And how about 'the bloated, blood red sun taints the earth a deep red, as if an open festering wound?' All the location descriptions are like that. I'm not saying they constitute Booker prize winning material, but let's hear a round of applause for Eighth Day's brave attempts to reintroduce literacy and descriptive prose to adventuring. Right, quieten down now and we can get to the rest of the game. It is the far future. The earth, poisoned with radioactivity, has been transformed over much of its surface into a seared, poisonous desert. Across this desert trek the remnants of humanity - pitiful nomad tribes, struggling to regain the civilisation their ancestors so senselessly threw away. Danger abounds - for one thing, bands of mutants roam the land, hideous creatures who hate normal people. But the real threat lies below - the androids. Left to their own devices when humanity bombed itself back into the Stone Age. the androids have decided to seek out a brave new world where they can start all over again. To that end, they have created a Space Ark, into which they are loading the Earth's remaining mineral wealth. Being tidy-minded little metal monsters, they don't intend to leave any litter behind. Once free of the planet's gravity well, they plan on exploding a doomsday device which will destroy the whole world. Although you don't realise it at the start of the game, it's your job to stop them - armed with a bow and arrow, and a flint tipped spear. Boy, that flying pig just missed me! Not content with a great little plot and magnificent prose, all at the measly price of £3.99. Eighth Day has very sneakily slotted in alternative sub-plots. At some point in the game, you're going to meet a shaman: he'll give you three choices. Each one leads into a different mini-adventure within the main adventure - and each different sub-plot will apparently bring a different end-game into play, so you will be able to play the game three times! Great stuff - worthy of an adventure selling at twice the price. Why Eighth Day's catalogue hasn't been snatched up by one of the big publishers I still don't know. Buy it - you won't regret it.

Your Sinclair

Graphics 4/10

Text 8/10

Value For Money 6/10

Personal Rating 6/10

Overall 7/10

Mike Gerrard 7/10

FAX BOX Title: Earthshock Publisher: 8th Day Software, [redacted] Price: £3.99 Reviewer: Mike Gerrard As a fan of almost all previous 8th Day releases, I'm sorry to say that this one disappointed me just a little, especially as it's announced as the first in its new Grafix! range of games. It's a particularly inappropriate one to start off with, as graphics in this are few and far between. I kept typing PICTURES to call them up, but nothing happened till quite a way into the game when the first rather ordinary illustration popped up. The text side of things is very well done, with lengthy and well-written for you - pity that also pushes up the price a little too. I won't try and condense the several pages of story into two sentences, but it's to do with robot cities, dusty plains, deep mineshafts and being sent on quests. There's nearly always something different about an 8th Day game, and this one's no exception. After you've solved the first few fairly easy problems, you're captured by tribesmen and invited to choose one of three objects - a key, a hoop or a sword. Each will lead to a different sub-quest within the game, although the outcome will be the same - in each one you'll find an object you need if you're to continue the main adventure. It does mean, though, that even when you've finished you can go back and get in a bit more adventuring for your money. 8th Day games are often fairly complex and tricky, too, but another disappointment was the way in which it seemed quite easy to get a fair way into the adventure. I'm sure it gets tougher later on, and if you're an 8th Day Adventurer, as opposed to a 7th Day Adventist, you'll probably still want to buy this latest, though it certainly isn't one of the greatest.

Read it at Your Sinclair Rock'n'Roll Years

Crash

Atmosphere 79%

Vocabulary 80%

Logic 79%

Addictive Qualities 78%

Overall 79%

Derek Brewster 79%

Producer: Eighth Day Retail Price: £3.99 Author: Michael White You have journeyed long across blasted plains, through the ruins of old cities, and past the salt dunes, remnants of the oceans. Now your destination is at hand. Mutants have trailed you for many days but you have always managed to keep one step ahead of their grossly radioactive bodies. As you neared the plains of ash, the tall ventilation shafts began to appear, the dark towers rutting from the black ash like a and, clutching the granules of dust drifting through other, unseen drowned fingers. Exploring tentatively, you found the ventilation shafts to be derelict, or sealed. Then, on your fourth day on the plains, the metallic hammering which had accompanied your journey so far and which you had come to investigate... ceased. Suddenly a terrible earthshock moved the plain, throwing you to the ground, dust rising in the air all around. You approached the nearest shaft and found the tremors had sent the shaft seals crashing down, leaving a small entrance hatch open. Piles of debris and rubble at the base of the shaft formed a small step up to this doorway, and you nimbly climbed up hoping to shed some light on the mysterious hammerings from below. Now you stand finally at a low door into the tower that hangs above your head, blotting out the blood-red eye of the sun, the dust clouds of ash rushing in as if seeking shelter. Stepping in and lighting your lamp reveals a small ledge above a dark, deep shaft. There is no way downward, the Stygian darkness revealing no secrets. Edging forward you notice the ledge crumbling as your weight bears down upon it, small chunks of masonry set loose and falling away into the darkness. You swing the lamp out to hang over the prt and illuminate the darkness below, and the hammering suddenly begins again. Startled at the sheer volume of the thuds funnelled up the shaft, you step back in surprise onto part of the ledge, which crumbles under your weight. At the same moment, a gush of air is sucked into the shaft, extinguishing your lamp - and the last sight you remember is the ledge collapsing, taking you down with it as the thin stream of daylight recedes above you. In a straightforward text-only game such as this you're bound to dwell on plot and how well the descriptions read. The location descriptions are indeed long, and reasonably atmospheric. Following the skeleton's outstretched hand, which points you in the right direction, you chance upon this description: 'You are on a small ledge that borders the eastern edge of the pit. Ledges border the shaft here, and run west, north and south. An odd pile of fallen concrete and rubble is piled in one corner. As you watch, small clouds of dark dust fall from above and drift slowly through the shaft, caught momentarily in the glare of your lamp, illuminated by the light as if alive, they disappear and are gone, spiralling down into the stifling darkness.' Here EXAMINE RUBBLE brings up nothing, but SEARCH RUBBLE reveals a thin plastic strip, without which you won't get to see the location-description I'll come to in a moment. Taking care not to fall down the shaft, you'll soon learn how to operate the cradle with the yellow-and-green buttons taking you up and down in stages. Off to one side is another atmospheric description: 'You are in a small side room once used to store all forms of tools needed for the task of pit maintenance. Once full of all types of electronic devices, it is now empty. A twisted metal door shattered by some great impact long ago, hangs off into the darkness of the shaft to the west, where a swaying maintenance cradle can be seen. Your attention is also caught by a yellow card.' The readable redesigned character set is light against a restful dark background, and the sparing use of colour livens up the odd passage or two. But slick presentation is left to the input line, where two towers part to accept your input. After about ten frames Earthshock's main trump card comes up. Whereas most adventures have but one solution pathway and ending, this game offers three different subquests which subtly alter the endgame. A tribesman from a group that captures you on the plains outside the shaft gives you the choke of a sword, a key, or a hoop lying atop a wooden shrine. Each choice leads to a different mini-adventure, after which you're returned to the main stream. Scoring in each subquest runs along the same lines. Earthshock is a text-only adventure, as far as I could tell, despite the mention of a graphics man on the loading screen. The three subplots add variety to the game and allow it to be played three times. Its good, lengthy location-descriptions add a great deal. Earthshock is available on mail order from Eighth Day at [redacted]. COMMENTS DIFFICULTY: not difficult ('moderate', says Eighth Day) GRAPHICS: none PRESENTATION: average INPUT FACILITY: verb/noun RESPONSE: fast, Quill

ZX ComputingZX Computing Globert

Overall Good

Peter Sweasy Good

8th Day £3.99 Another title from Eighth Day, pioneers in quality budget adventures, and the people behind the wonderful HRH. This is in their new 'Grafix' range, though pictures are conspicuous by their sparsity, and when they do appear, they are distinctly average. Earthshock has a lot of text, because it is a compressed Quilled game. On one side of the tape is the text and graphics version, where the words are pretty verbose, on the other is the text only, where veritable floods of text appear. The writing is generally above average, though sometimes tedious. The theme is a bit dreary, a futuristic fantasy science fiction thingy, where as a member of a post-apocalyptic tribe you must battle with the droids who have taken over the world. I'm fed up with working out how to use futuristic technology (there always seem to be slots for inserting cards into). Still, there are some nice touches, and the scenario is pleasantly detailed. You receive an admirably full instruction/story booklet, very good for four quid. The adventure is entertaining enough for budget, though vocabulary is weak (for example, with "a pile of rubble," SEARCH RUBBLE is fruitful, SEARCH PILE and "you find nothing unusual"), and the problems are nothing astounding. An innovative feature is 'three way' play - at one point you make a decision which sends you on one of three sub-quests, and determines one of three end-games. So theoretically, you can play three times. Decide for yourself whether this is good or gimmicky. Some above-average features, enjoyable, but I feel 8th Day are capable of better.