Country Cottages

Sinclair Programs

Rating 25%

June Mortimer 25%

PRICE: £5.95 GAME TYPE: Simulation Toy money is easily spent, and easily lost. Few games have the success of Monopoly in persuading each player to cling desperately to every fake pound. Country Cottages fails completely. The money you use in it, apart from being intangible and unreal, is also supposed to come from a bank loan. None of these points gives any incentive to spend the money sensibly, or to worry if it is all lost. Starting with a bank loan, your aim is to buy, rent and sell cottages in order to make a certain amount of money before your opponent does so. Cottages are portrayed so that you can choose whether or not to buy them , potential tenants - almost all of whom seem to be young and to have had children exceptionally quickly - are described for you to accept or decline. The risks of the game are not particularly great. Tenants may run off unexpectedly, leaving the house in a mess but, on the whole, they are content to remain in your cottages, suffering the odd minor burglary and paying exorbitantly high rents until you have made as much money as you wish. Houses burning down may be a risk, but it is not a great one. A stolid and uninteresting game , Country Cottages is produced by Sterling Software, [redacted].

Big K

Graphics 2/3

Playability 3/3

Addictiveness 2/3

Overall 2/3

John Conquest 2/3

STICK TRICKS MAKER: Sterling FORMAT: cassette PRICE: £5.95 One for budding rural Rachmans - two players buy and rent cottages, racing towards a preset total assets figure, the size of which is used to determine the length of the game. There are nine rater unnecessarily difficulty levels which increase the hazards; fires, ghosts, moonlighters, damage, burglaries and all the things that make being a landlord so interesting. You start with nothing but a 12% interest bank loan facility and a clever, if rather irrelevant, landscaping system throws up a seemingly endless variety of available properties with price, condition and comments. In theory you can own up to four, but your bank manager limits your spending power. Once you have a cottage, you advertise for tenants - but set the rent too high and you get no response. Similarly you can raise rents, but you risk losing the tenants. Mostly single-key operated, the game runs very smoothly and the bookkeeping is very slick. But my word, what a fly-by-night lot the tenants are! It's not all gravy, this landlording lark. A bit limited in that you have very few, and often no, options, but fun and original.

Crash

Use of Computer 72%

Graphics 79%

Getting Started 64%

Playability 70%

Addictive Qualities 38%

Value For Money 46%

Overall 62%

Unknown

Unknown

Producer: Sterling Software Memory Required: 48K Retail Price: £5.95 Language: Machine code Author: Brian James This is a charming strategy game for two players which brings a whiff of the countryside to your screen. The object is to buy country cottages on a bank overdraft and make money from them by renting them out to a stream of oddball characters. Each player starts off with an overdraft facility of £100,000, and each player takes it in turn, with a turn representing a month. The screen display shows your bank balance, value of assets, increase in assets (as land prices rise) and interest owed to the bank. It also shows what properties (if any) the players own, what tennants are in and what they are paying in rent. With each turn a player may opt to have a look at offered properties, advertise for a tennant, raise the rent or sell an empty property. Opting to look at something, the screen cuts to a rapidly drawn graphic of the cottage in question. There are several types in a wide price range. If the player can afford it, it goes to auction and there is a scramble between the players to secure it, with the steps going up in £200 between bids. Once a cottage is owned, it may be advertised, with the rent wanted being input. If the asking price is not too steep a tennant may arrive, usually with some other impedmenta like monkeys or cats. During a turn the rent may be raised or lowered, although putting it up too often or too much may well result in the tennant pushing off in disgust. If a property is sold, the player receives its original asking price plus the appreciation factor per month of ownership. After a year's play, if a year's bank balance is satisfactory, the bank manager may increase the overdraft facility to £200, 000 and so on. The winner is the first player whose total assets first reach the pre-set target figure for a short or long game. COMMENTS Control keys: 8 keys for input with one for each player at auction time Joystick: N/A Keyboard play: input routine uses ENTER or Y and is very fast Use of colour: very good on the cottages, sensible on the balance sheets Graphics: excellent, and drawn very quickly Sound: used usefully Skill levels: 9, increasing hazards to property Lives: N/A Screens: random landscape creation Special features:

Micro Adventurer

SW

DES RES MICRO: Spectrum 48K PRICE: £5.95 FORMAT: Cassette SUPPLIER: Sterling Software, [redacted] If you have an ambition to be a rich property owner, Country Cottages could suit you. It's the ideal way of making (or losing) a fortune on property, without actually spending a penny. Vicarious living at its boldest! The basic idea is that you are an investor who wants to buy country cottages. To buy your cottages you have to negotiate a loan from your friendly bank manager at a high fixed rate of interest. (Your bank manager won't be so friendly if you lose his money!) Once you're solvent and the interest is ticking up, you visit the estate agent, who takes you to view the properties available. The agent's prospectus includes good and bad points of the properties for sale. For instance, your cottage might have no roof, but terrific burglar alarms. Graphically, what should be a pretty cottage looks more like a shed in a barren field. Still, once you've spent your money and if expenses and repairs haven't made you bankrupt, you can then advertise your delightful cottages in superb rural settings and, hopefully, find some sucker who will buy or rent them. Then with your new found wealth you can buy more sheds... sorry - cottages. You can buy up to four properties, though you can choose your level of hazard and start with only two (a sensible move in these depressed times). The game needs at least two players, and I would recommend it more for classroom use than for home use. Properly handled in a classroom setting it could prove interesting and informative, giving a reasonable idea of the costs and problems involved in buying property. But certainly it would need adult help and supervision for children to get the best out of this one.

Personal Computer Games

Graphics 7/10

Sound 3/10

Originality 5/10

Lasting Interest 4/10

Overall 5/10

Peter Walker

Robert Patrick

Steve Cooke

Steve Spittle 5/10

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K CONTROL: Keys FROM: Sterling Software, £5.95 Ever fancied yourself as a grasping landlord? Well Country Cottages is just the program for giving vent to your venal impulses. You will need a partner and at least half an hour to play this game. You and your opponent start off without hard cash - just a loan from a friendly bank manager. The first thing to do is to choose the length of the game which is done by entering a target amount of money; the first one to reach it wins. Next the two players take it in turns to buy, sell and rent out cottages. A property is described and shown in hi-res graphics on the screen, and the players bid against each other until the price goes too high for one of them. Supposedly the program holds thousands of different cottages, but in fact they are all variations of the same cottage and background. After purchasing a cottage you can rent it out by advertising the cottage and y our chosen monthly rental. Humourously named people then come to rent the cottages. Other game options include selling cottages, adjusting rent and viewing the state of your bank balances. Hazards include cottages being burgled or catching fire - they may even suffer damage from thunderstorms. When a player reaches the target figure which was set at the start of the game, he/she has won. The instructions say that the winner will be, 'justly rewarded for their victory'. What you get is a corny message in red lettering. Counuy Cottages is a fairly standard property management game. It is simple to play and neatly presented, although not the most sophisticated game of its kind. If you are looking for a fun game to play with family, this will keep you occupied for a while.

Your Spectrum

STERLING STUFF? It's not exactly rare these days to see book publishers dipping their toes into the software market, therefore it's hardly any surprise to find Sterling Publications sprouting forth the dynamically titled division, Sterling Software. The new company's got two packages due for October release, both aimed at the Spectrum user. First up is Country Cottages, a two-player strategy affair involving the purchase and sale of properties... a sort of down-market Monopoly. In the usual struggle to outdo the opposition, Sterling claim that the game contains "an infinite number of different graphic views"! The other title is called Assignment East Berlin which sounds a bit like James Bond Meets His Funeral In Berlin, except that in its infinite wisdom, Sterling has named the lead character 'Ice Man'. Hmm? Still, old traditions never die... just as you know Bond can't cop it in his new film (because they've already started making another), you'll be pleased to know that Sterling has already got its man of ice earmarked to star in Assignment Hong Kong in the future. Both titles will be on sale for £5.95, and if you want to find out where Ice Man's going after Hong Kong give 'em a bell on [redacted].

Sterling's Country Cottages - Monopoly on the cheap?