The Bimbles

Crash

Atmosphere 82%

Vocabulary 81%

Logic 80%

Addictive Quality 76%

Overall 79%

Derek Brewster 79%

DEREK BREWSTER'S ADVENTURE TRAIL A very hectic time it has been getting this issue of The Trail out, but I think I've just about made it. Next month is the full-blown editorial which regulars will know comes along every bumper Christmas issue and I'm busy working on some of the ideas now. By the deadline I will have some words that reflect on the state of microcomputer games and how it relates to the broader picture. This month I've reviewed Twice Shy, a Mosaic game based on a book by Dick Francis, which, for a change, I have received before everyone else has even previewed it! The Bimbles are really a set of derivative Bombles, I mean Wombles, Demon of Darkness is quite a tough adventure which likes to fool around with the location descriptions, and Prehistoric Adventure is one of the best packaged adventures I have ever seen for a game which at the time of writing is still mail-order only. It comes complete with a superb poster showing all those strange dinosaurs that walked the lands over 150 million years ago. I hope I've got these details correct as I'm writing this just after I've sent the whole works back to Crash head office for screen shots, so I'm pulling all this information from memory, which is fickle at the best of times... Also this month is a mention for two fanzines (as they call themselves), for adventure enthusiasts. One, THE Questline Chronicles, is basically a review magazine, while Adventure Contact is more a forum aimed at improving adventure writing skills, a cause of which I wholeheartedly approve! I was most impressed with the standards of both, and perhaps one day I will get around to a proper survey of this whole underground world of publishing. THE BIMBLES Producer: Intech Retail Price: £3.00 Author: John Matthews Here's a game which heralds its arrival as 'the game no-one's been waiting for', and luckily this kind of honest humour carries on throughout the proceedings. Theme-wise the program borrows much from the Wombles, a bunch of ecologically sound furry eccentrics who once inhabited a TV slot just before the BBC news. This game is Quilled and mailorder only, but it is friendly, funny, and captivating in a barmy sort of way so I'll take you through the plot to see what you think of it. It looks like these Bimbles are just as green as their more famous counterparts, as they are very worried at the new developments in Bombledon Park which threaten to destroy the local ecosystem - not to mention their own cosy burrows. Your task, as Fungo, is to find out who is digging up the place and to stop them before the next set of Yuppie apartments are laid out. Much of the game's strength lies in its useful examine command, and in the option offered on conversing to the various odd-bods who inhabit the warren of burrows which is your home. The graphics wouldn't win any art prizes (or perhaps they are so bad that these days they just might), but there is a good sense of colour - fairly simple but worth seeing nonetheless. Mapping this game is quite straightforward as there are no magic wands continuously whizzing you from place to place, or any other such disorientating influences to contend with. The first of the looney characters you meet is Great Uncle Buggeria who strains through his 36 pairs of spectacles to utter 'Puss will get greasy if she is not sheltered from the rain' to which Fungo quite rightly retorts, 'Oh shut up you doddering old fool', whereupon the Great Uncle drops dead. Several other characters spout these cryptic nonsense's, but how much you will make of them I'm not sure. Perhaps the most intelligible one comes from Madame Croquet in her kitchen who supplies the puzzle, 'My basil pie should keep the cars off.' On eating the pie you munch into a screwdriver, which doesn't say much for madame's cooking but does give you another useful object in a seemingly unending list. However, the program is generous, allowing you to carry ten objects at any one time. One of these, a physics book, is curious in that it can lead to an untimely instant death, and yet it cannot be dropped. In one area we team of a Bogeymoron, who would seem aptly named as his heroes are Clive Sinclair and Graeme Kidd! This is another example of the game's honest humour, which is really it's overriding theme. As one final example I'll leave you with one of the comments you get on entering something it just can't understand: 'OK, OK, so again I bore you with the same message, but if I had enough memory left you wouldn't have this problem'. Bimbles is available from [redacted]. COMMENTS Difficulty: easy to get into Graphics: none worth mentioning Presentation: colourful Input facility: v/n Response: Quill, very fast