The Wizard Akyrz

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Personal Rating 7/10

Keith Campbell 7/10

What is a quest? Well we reckon it's an Adventure with more than a hint of classic Dungeons & Dragons game about it. Here Keith Campbell, Paul Coppins, Simon Marsh and new recruit Jim Douglas take a look at some Adventures inspired by D&D. WIZARD OF AKYRZ You start this Mysterious Adventure in a throne room in the presence of the King who charges you with the task of rescuing the princess. You also have to find and store some treasures. After a search of the palace, you discover the way out and then probably return for some bits and pieces that you must have missed the first time round. Going through caves and tunnels (if you have sorted the problems out properly) and, in possession of a couple of treasures, you find yourself on a farm with a rickety bridge and a path blocked by a large rock. The puzzle of moving the rock requires taking a fox, some corn and a chicken over the bridge and it is constructed in such a way as to be a very tricky operation! The problems get more difficult at this point and I suspect that I overcame the rock problem by my own somewhat dubious method, rather than the "correct" way! Still, all's fair in Adventure and I pressed on happily, finding some strange things in nesting boxes down on the farm! Most of the problems have fairly obvious pointers to them, but there are a few real stinkers that seem to leave a lot to inspired guesswork. Some of the location exits illogically disappear when you have passed through them, although this is intentional and meant to frustrate the inefficient adventurer! One thing I am not too keen on is mazes - and in this game they seem to crop up every few locations! At least they are not the "impossible" type. It is not too difficult to blunder through them by hitting N, S, E and W at random and eventually get out if you, like me, are too distrustful to leave potentially valuable objects scattered around as landmarks. I played the BBC version which is, of course, text only, but didn't seem any the worse for it. The text is coloured which brightens it up no end and the response is instantaneous. Not entirely an original quest, perhaps, but the Adventure is nevertheless enjoyable and worth playing. I rate it amongst the best of the Mysterious Adventures. Wizard of Akyrz is from Channel 8 for a variety of micros.