Ice Station Zero

Your Sinclair

Text 5/10

Value 6/10

Personal Ratings 6/10

Tim Kemp 6/10

Title: Ice Station Zero Price: £1.75 cassette Publisher: Eighth Day Software, [redacted] Reviewer: Tim Kemp While casually flicking through an old YS (like you do) I came across a review of Ice Station Zero by 8th Day software. The rights to that, and all the other 8th day titles, have been acquired by GI Games which means that they are available once more. I'd only tried a couple of the titles myself when they first did the rounds, and it was Mike Gerrard's less than glowing review that made me give this particular title a miss. Three years ago Mike said it looked 'dated'. It still does a bit, though if you're prepared to put in some hard mental work then you may be surprised to learn that beneath the modest exterior lies a neat little game. The adventure gets underway with a nifty split screen graphic showing a tent surrounded by glacial peaks and ice floes. A harrying blizzard obscures much of your view, though you see that the way North leads to the edge of the camp and you can also go 'In' to a tent. Getting out of the blizzard is a good idea and once under canvas you'll discover a couple of handy items. When you feel ready, you can brave the outside world and venture forth into the whiteness of the arctic. There are only a few locations to explore before things start getting difficult so just remember that, as far as I could see, STORE and CALL work as RAMSAVE and LOAD (you'll be using them a lot) and EXAMINE and SEARCH do two totally different things. Before long you'll come across a sledge complete with Huskies. Try out search and examine and you'll see what I mean. The use of those two commands are commonplace in most adventures, though in this game you do end up feeling that you have to methodically search and examine everything. A much better idea would have been to use search as a general command and reserve examine for examining items that the search command had uncovered. Even from the early locations it seems that the author has been a bit stingy when it comes to the vocabulary. One example comes early on when you locate the dog team who are tied up and obviously need to be set loose, but try as I might I only found one command that would accomplish that task, and it took me over half an hour! Then there's the pesky wolves to be faced. They appear with tiresome frequency and, while they are easy to scare off they add absolutely nothing of worth to the proceedings and are just a pain in the bum! As you continue to play you'll find that, problem-wise, the game itself is really rather good. Unfortunately, you can't get away from the fact that the lack of vocabulary and the way that certain things 'must' be tackled lets it down. A few sudden-ish deaths are also lurking in the background, which isn't something I find endearing. The game is nice enough, there are a few graphics that appear quickly and are neatly executed and, unlike my predecessor way back in 1989, I didn't give up on the game. It's possibly a little bit dated nowadays, though if you're the kind of adventurer who can methodically work out how to accomplish tasks by systematically going though every verb/noun command combination you'll probably enjoy it. Then, when it's all over and you've finished the game, you'll look back on it and feel pleased as Punch for being such a clever clogs! Without having to search for the words to overcome most problems I think the game would be more suited to a beginner, though given all that I've said about the vocabulary it is, as it stands, a much more formidable challenge than it should have been. Ice Station Zero is available from: GI Games, [redacted]. (Cheques and PO's payable to: SANDVEN LTD. Overseas customers add £1.00 to cover the extra postal charges.)

BLIM! The objects and items that appear most frequently in adventures are: Locked Doors, Keys (to unlock the doors), Lamps (torches, lanterns, candles, etc.), Swords and Trolls.

Read it at Your Sinclair Rock'n'Roll Years

Your Sinclair

Graphics 5/10

Text 4/10

Value For Money 4/10

Personal Rating 5/10

Overall 5/10

Mike Gerrard 5/10

Title: Ice Station Zero Publisher: 8th Day Software, [redacted] Price: £2.99 Reviewer: Mike Gerrard Ice Station Zero first appeared several years ago, and following 8th Day's policy of tarting up its old releases and putting them out again, here's the new improved version. But is it improved? Sadly the answer would seem to be no. It's now got graphics, and more text thanks to compression techniques (such as The Press), plus a RAM save/load feature, but the basic game is still the same and that now looks very dated and not worth the rather high asking price of £2.99. The adventure begins with you outside a small snow-covered tent, with a blizzard obscuring your view except for a high ridge of towering glacial ice to the east. (I think we can safely assume that it's cold.) Inside the tent there are some objects, very few of which you can examine, while outside to the north are some huskies tied to a sledge (Mush, mush!). EXAMINE SLEDGE. "It does seem a shame to leave them tied up." it also seems a shame that after a response like this you have to SEARCH SLEDGE in order to survive the first few moves. If you do survive the peril of the wolves, you might be able to make it across the ice floes. This is trickier than it should be because, after jumping to the first floe, if you try to JUMP EAST again you're returned to the previous location, whereas if you just type EAST you make it across to the next ice floe. As usual with any 8th Day game, there is a heck of a lot of adventure in there, but I for one wasn't encouraged to seek it out because the whole thing really did look very dated indeed. It needed PAW and a complete re-write to make this one worth digging out of the archives, and it in no way compares to the shot in the arm that Smart Egg gave to Quann Tulla/Federation. A rare failure for 8th Day.

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Personal Rating 7/10

Keith Campbell 7/10

MORE GAMES WITHOUT FRONTIERS 8th Day Software is one of the new breed of "cottage" software houses that have grown since the advent of the Quill. What makes the company different from most of the rest is that their games, once priced at £1.75, still cost only £2.50 each. The co-directors of the company are Michael White and Gary Kelbrick, who also write all the games using the Quill. I asked them why their games cost so little compared with other Adventures, and their answer was quite controversial. Gary and Michael both think that 99 percent of Adventure games on the market are overpriced for what they contain and feel, to a certain extent, that many games are written badly, story-wise, with unoriginal problems. Naturally, they also feel that their games are always original and worth every penny. So I thought I'd take a look at this series, to see if it is all that its producers claim. FOUR MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT This game was written by Michael White and is concerned with events after a deadly virus is released into the atmosphere from a high security research station in America. The virus has killed most of the world's population and only a few, seemingly immune, have survived, including you. You must learn the skills of the old technology and recruit five members to form a team to travel across the States to disarm nuclear weapons which have been left unguarded and still threaten the remaining population. This game is well thought out, and quite difficult. At the start, you are standing at a petrol station. A few seconds later a car crashes into it and explodes. From inside the car you hear screams. If you manage to rescue the occupant, he will help you with your mission. The game continues along these lines and is quite fun to play. Personal Rating: 7 QUANN TULLA Without doubt, the best game of the series is Quann Tuna, and I think this should be picked up by a major company. The story is of an evil empire that has fought a long and bloody war with the Just Foundation. The Foundation is losing, and your mission is to destroy some top secret manuals, kill a traitor and destroy a crippled space ship. The game takes place aboard your flagship and progresses through space to a far distant alien world. This may prove too difficult for beginners, but the experienced Adventure nut will love it, especially its weird objects such as the lead ball and lighter-than-air docking badge! Great stuff! Personal Rating: 9 ICE STATION ZERO In this one, you are cast as a secret service agent who must defeat the evil genius Stirling. Stirling, it seems, has planted a nuclear bomb somewhere near the south pole. Setting off, you find yourself standing in the freezing snow, from where you move on to discover ice floes, yetis etc., which must be overcome before killing the maniacal Stirling. Personal Rating: 7 IN SEARCH OF ANGELS This is one of the easiest of the series and is based upon Ian Fleming's early novels. You are cast as a rather poor man's version of James Bond and you find a dead CIA agent floating face-down in the Thames. From there you progress around the world trying to stop an organisation known as "The Company" from taking over. Personal Rating: 5 FAERIE This has to be one of the most spine-chilling games available! It has nothing whatsoever to do with the notorious "Pink Fairy"! The plot is, to say the least, complicated with many sub-divisions. You are sent off into the underworld to find the three treasures of Isi-Tunn, and it's not easy! Personal Rating: 8 CUDDLES Finally, Keith had a look at Cuddles, another of the 8th Day series, and after being cut by a "broach" on his Nanny's dress and finding he had to refer to it as a "broach", and that all subsequent text referred to it as a "broach" he says he could not bear to bring himself to continue with the game, let alone review it! "Games Without Frontiers" are for the 48k Spectrum, priced £2.50, and available from 8th Day Software at [redacted].

Sinclair User

Gilbert Factor 5/10

Richard Price 5/10

FAERIE 8th Day Memory: 48K Price: £1.75 ICE STATION ZERO 8th Day Memory: 48K Price: £1.75 By anyone's reckoning £1.75 is a good price to pay for a text adventure provided there has been no skimping on quality. 8th Day Software have introduced a suite of six games at that price, all written with the Quill. The programs are graded from beginners standard to advanced difficulty and cover a range of subjects from science fiction to thrillers. It would have been useful to be able to look at the full set but regrettably only two of the games would load and only then after persistent attempts. The two that loaded are quite adequate adventures. Faerie is set in a magical world of demons, eccentric wizards and changeling children. The game is of the advanced type and progress can only be made after a solid bout of clear lateral thinking. Both the setting and the puzzles are imaginative and intricate and you can expect long hours of perplexed entertainment from it. Ice Station Zero, a beginner's adventure, is loosely based on the plot of a film with a similar title. A mad terrorist has taken over a polar research station and you must cross the lethal ice-pack to reach the installation before the maniac destroys New York. It may well be for beginners but it certainly is not a doddle by any means.

Read it at Sinclair User Magazine Online

Big K

Graphics N/A

Playability 3/3

Addictiveness 3/3

Overall 3/3

Fin Fahey 3/3

MAKER: 8th Day Software FORMAT: cassette PRICE: £1.99 each Pure text adventures seem to be becoming a threatened species of late. There seems to be a general feeling that to sell, a program has to contain graphics. Doesn't matter how tacky, how irrelevant to the plot line, how much memory is wasted, we gotta have them pictures. A good counter to what I, for one, see as a pernicious trend is this collection of six pocket-money programs from 8th Day, a new Merseyside outfit. The packaging is understandably minimal, a plain black wrapper in every case, although you do get a natty plastic rack if you purchase all six. There's nothing cut-price about the quality however. as far as I could see, each of these is a well-thought out, properly plotted adventure. Better still, every one is on a different theme. The nearest to the hackneyed old Sword-and-Sorcery schlock is Faerie, but this rests more on Celtic whimsy than conquering barbarians. The vital thing is to keep the fairies happy, one way being to swap a human baby for their changeling, a bit naughty this. Four Minutes to Midnight seems to be the most advanced program, and pits you against a post-catastrophe world. The object is to rebuild civilisation from the ruins by assembling a team of capable and technically-skilled people. To my mind this goes one better than The Hobbit in terms of human interaction, and displays genuine originality. Cuddles is a bit on the cute side - you are a bored toddler and you have to escape from your cot and get past nanny to sample the delights of the outside world. Ice Station Zero owes something to the dreadful Alistair Maclean story - for Zero read Zebra - it's a thriller set on the Arctic Icepack. The obligatory space adventure is represented in the form of Quann Tulla in which you have to get a crippled starship working again. In Search of Angels is a Fleming-style spy story full of the obligatory souped-up sportsters full of gadgetry. A lot of ground has been covered here, all six packages taken together cost the same as two normally-priced Spectrum programs, but represent months of playing time. This is the first time I've encountered software at a reasonable price which sacrifices nothing in the way of quality. Surely this, and not peculiar security devices, is the answer to piracy?

Your Computer

Hugo North

Spectrum 48K £1.75 Eight Day Software Now to what must the adventurer's bargain of the year. Eighth Day Software have released a series of Ouilled text adventures for the 48K Spectrum, and each of them only costs £1.75. You'd be forgiven for thinking that they can't be much cop for that sort of money but you'd be dead wrong. The adventures are good quality with interesting themes. For example Cuddles has you as a precocious baby trapped in a playpen, guarded by a nanny and with nothing but a bowl of sloppy food and a building block to experiment with. In Ice Station Zero you're on the trail of an international terrorist who is holed out in a polar research station yet holding New York to ransom. Other titles in the collection are Quann Tulla and, the two most difficult, Faerie and Four Minutes to Midnight. Available only by mail order from Eighth Day, [redacted], these adventures are excellent value for money.

Personal Computer News

Mike Gerrard

It's been quite a day, let me tell you. Fortified by just a bowl of cornflakes I had to start by saving America which had been devastated by a bacteriological disaster. Then, after a short break for coffee, I was wrestling with Stirling, the international terrorist, who was threatening to wipe out New York if he didn't get his billion dollar ransom. As this exceeded my limit at the NatWest Service till I left him to it, only to find that one of Britain's early warning attack satellites had gone missing. Of course I had to step into the breach and deal with that before I felt I'd earned my lunch time pie and pint. The afternoon, if anything, was worse. I had to battle with the might of the evil corrupt Empire on behalf of the Federation, though this was as nothing compared to doing battle with the might of my nanny in order to break out of the playpen and find a new arm for tattered old teddy. Finally, I entered a magical world of fairies and grottoes in the traditional hunt for treasure, without which no adventurer's day is complete. The blame for my day of mayhem and monsters lies fair and square with 8th Day Software, which has just released the first six in its series called 'Games Without Frontiers', all written with The Quill for the 48K Spectrum and all selling at the incredible price of £1.75 (including postage, from 8th Day Software, [redacted]). CHEAP BUT GOOD As with the recent batch of cut-rate arcade software, cheap prices don't necessarily mean inferior quality. It was heartening to load these adventures up and discover that the general standard was very high indeed, catering for a range of preferences and ability levels. Don't expect glossy packaging for that price, though the cassette covers look smart with their uniform black background and silver lettering. Another standard feature is the inclusion on the B-side of each cassette of the storyline for the adventure you've bought, and of the others in the series, with a few pages on the playing of adventure games in general. Each adventure is graded as beginner's, moderate or advanced, and hint sheets or individual clues are available from 8th Day. This thorough and professional approach would be wasted, of course, if the adventures themselves were dismal efforts, but they're far from being that. Even the beginner's game proved pretty tough going in places. FLOE AND THE KIDS This is Ice Station Zero, whose loading screen for some reason shows a pterodactyl flying over an iceberg. I could understand a polar bear, huskies and even a Yeti in the icy wastes, but a pterodactyl? This is the one with mad Stirling and the billion dollar ransom, and you have to cross the Arctic ice-cap to get to him. You begin outside a small snow-covered tent on the western edge of an immense ice-field with a pack of wolves howling across the frozen plains. Though there are a few items in the tent, the means to defend yourself against the wolves (and their newly acquired striker) is carefully hidden away somewhere for you to find. Little graphics touches are possible when using The Quill, such as when you EXAMINE GUN which shows you the number of bullets remaining, while FIRE GUN produces a couple of bullet-holes either side of the screen. Can you escape the polar bear and the Yeti, what happens if you remove your clothing (known as losing your Kagool) and how do you make the air turn blue? The storyline of this one is full of healthy nonsense but the standard of the text is very high, as with most of this series. From Yeti to Nanny and the moderately difficult Cuddles, described as an adventure for big kids. Pack the nappies, examine the potty and plot your route for finding a new arm for teddy, who you thoughtlessly left up a tree. As you move round the nursery you find coloured building blocks, each with a different letter on it - and no, they don't spell out a rude word. But woe betide the player who searches the nappy cupboard without nasal protection. NUCLEAR 'N NAUGHTY From the nursery to nuclear war with Four Minutes to Midnight, which opens in dramatic style. 'You are on the forecourt of a small gas station beside several neglected gasoline pumps. There is a small road waning to the east while the garage fronting is west. You can also see a dusty mini-bus. A car is careering down the road towards the station.' Needless to say you don't have many turns before 'The car hits the pumps! With a massive explosion the station erupts in a ball of flames!' You too, of course. Unfortunately a slight lack of care over the inputs means that it's virtually impossible to get through the first few moves properly. You can step the car exploding but it still burns, and you have to respond to the driver's pleas for help by somehow rescuing him. You're told his name is Dave, but GET DAVE, CARRY DAVE, HELP DAVE and so on all fail to work. Eventually my patience ran out and I cheated to discover I should have typed RECRUIT DAVE. Hmmmm... bit naughty, that. Also naughty is a routine in in Search of Angels, an espionage thriller. You very soon find yourself at an airport where the girl on the desk asks you for your destination. Only by looking at the Hint Sheet can you discover your possible destinations of exotic locations - such as Rio, Casablanca, Berlin, Tokyo and London. Once you know where you can go, however, you can move around the world trying to piece together clues about the lost early warning satellite and the dead CIA agent floating in the River Thames. SPACE 'N FAERIS Naturally there had to be a sci-fi story in this batch. Quann Tulla is vaguely in the Snowball tradition of space ships, robots, security doors, secret manuals and so on. 'The fate of the Universe is in your hands!' My reaction to that was blunt and brief, and I was promptly told: 'Hygiene Clone II appears from nowhere with a bar of soap to clean out your mouth!' Finally Faeri, an advanced difficulty game whose plot twists and turns so much that it's hard to describe. You're in a fantasy world, looking for treasure, with the guardians of the Underworld and Overworld out to prevent you from doing that. There are 30 main treasures and an additional three Sacred Treasures. 8th Day reckons this one will keep you busy for the next six months.

In Ice Station you leave your tent to fight hungry wolves.

Micro Adventurer

John Fraser

ICE BOUND MICRO: Spectrum 48K PRICE: £1.75 FORMAT: Cassette SUPPLIER: 8th Day Software, [redacted] An adventure game for just £1.75 sounded too good to be true, so I was naturally sceptical when I read 8th Day's catalogue which described their batch of six quill-designed adventures as "presenting a unique standard of quality rarely found in adventure games." The games have been graded in difficulty ranging from beginner to advanced levels. Ice Station Zero was rated as a beginners game, so I loaded this one first, thinking it wouldn't take very long to review. As it turned out, I met with one maddening problem almost immediately and despite following the hints sheet to the letter, I couldn't make any further progress. The scenario is clearly derived from Alistair Maclean's thriller Ice Station Zebra and like a thriller grabs your attention right from the beginning. Your mission is to prevent a mad terrorist attempting to destroy New York from a remote Arctic research station. You have to cross the vast Arctic wastes in order to reach the station and kill the terrorist before he detonates the bomb. Along the way you have to deal with snow drifts, crevasses, hungry wolves and bears, and even a Yeti. My difficulties began when trying to cross the ice floe, only a few moves away from the start location. At the outset of the game you can hear wolves howling across the ice, so you know you must get away as soon as possible. I found a gun hidden on a sledge and took it with me, expecting to be able to defend myself against them. It was when I reached the edge of the icefield that the wolves prevented me from travelling any further. According to the hints sheet you must jump across the icebergs after firing the gun to disperse the wolves, which seemed simple enough. But then I discovered that every time I fired they disappeared only to return a fraction of a second later, with the result that I was killed off every time the bullets ran out. I did once manage to escape the wolves but for some reason decided to quit and start again. Since then I've been kicking myself for not continuing while I still had a chance. I had hoped to say that if you were new to adventures and didn't want to spend a lot of money, Ice Station Zero would be a good one to sample first. This assumes, however, that you don't find yourself in the same predicament as me - in which case you could be in for several hours of frustration.

Your Spectrum

AND ON THE 8TH DAY... Yet another Liverpudlian software house has just programmed itself into existence. Called 8th Day Software, the company's opening its range with six text adventures, ranging in difficulty from beginner's stuff to 'jolly difficult'. All have a low price of £1.75, but 8th Day is quick to disclaim the "you-get-what-you-pay-for' syndrome. The six new titles, all launched under the 'Games Without Frontiers' banner, are all Quilled adventures and your measly £1.75 even includes postage, packing and VAT. How they can do it at such a low price and still make a profit defeats us. Unwrapping the first six packages, we have Four Minutes to Midnight (an advanced strategy adventure), Cuddles (a moderately difficult adventure for 'big' kids), Quann Tulla (a science fiction adventure), Ice Station Zero (a beginner's crime solving adventure), In Search of Angels (another crime adventure) and Faerie (an advanced fantasy adventure). All the games can be ordered direct from 8th Day Software, so give them a ring on [redacted].

In Search of Angels - one of six packages priced at £1.75!