Yes! Another one from Yorkshire's foremost...!


                      From Little Acorns...

                         By Simon Brown

                 (C) Budgie UK Licenseware 1990

The Story of the Game

A day like any other in the next dimension; a couple of dwarfish 
louts digging up the road just outside your hovel, Neighbours 
with a cast of aboriginal pixies into it's seven thousanth 
episode on the old tri-D, and your best mate and utter imbecile 
Alvin about to turn up for your traditional weekend drinking, 
fighting, falling over and being violently sick at the Goblin and 
Snotrag down the road.
  A sigh, Alvin is late. This brings a warm glow of happiness to 
your otherwise unlovely face. How and why Alvin got to be your 
best mate is a matter for long and delicate deliberation, 
probably while banging your head violently against a brick wall. 
Even the best thing his mother could find to say about him was, 
"Well, at least he doesn't take drugs... a lot...". Most people 
prefer a shorter and considerably more colourful description. 
It's not that Alvin is boring, offensive, ugly, clumsy, and a 
terrible dancer... Actually, that is the problem. Alvin truly is 
boring, offensive, ugly etc. Not like you. Not at all.
  Alvin arrives. A new cardigan, Alvin? Possibly from that fine 
pervayor of fashion clothing, Marks and Spencers? Not for the 
first time you wonder why you bother. Still, he is your best 
mate, and after a few glasses (sorry - tankards) of lukewarm beer 
you could almost like the guy.
  You set off through the fairyland countryside, Alvin sucking 
hopelessly at an overly-large and probably illegal pipe, emitting 
ghastly clouds of blue smoke that causes birds to fly into trees 
and squirrels to titter foolishly at each other.
  It's a fine day, though, the sun warm in the sky, the wind 
gently ruffling your sandy brown hair. Bunnies cavort in the 
meadows all around, tiny wee elves sunning themselves next to 
their mushroom homes. The place is highly nauseating, in fact, 
enough to make a grown man weep and reach for his shotgun. That's 
life in the next dimension... crocks of gold, quests for 
treasure, dwarfs, swords, mystical twisting tunnels, plenty of 
beer, naturally, the whole works. Alvin rides a clapped out A-reg 
scooter called Bonnie (after Langford) which is quite odd. you 
watch Neighbours on a three-dimensional visual display unit, 
which could also be thought of as odd, given the abundance of 
dwarves and singing about gold. Still, continuity was never a 
requisite for these fantasy lands of danger and adventurer. Oh, 
by the way, that's what you and Alvin do for a living. 
Professional adventurer. Text only Infocom adventures a 
speciality. Degrading, isn't it?
  As always, you and Alvin arrive at the Goblin and Snotrag at 
opening and are standing on the dirty front step when the 
landlady opens it. She is new here, and is obviously impressed by 
your adventurer's attire, all black leather and concealed handy 
keys.
  "Are you boys the police?" she gasps.
  "No mam," replies Alvin, "we're adventurers."
  The Blues Brothers was on tri-D only last week, you recall. 
Kicking Alvin out of the way, you stride into the cool depths of 
the tavern. Cut out of a small grassy hillock, the Goblin and 
Snotrag is a high-class establishment. If someone beat the living 
shit out of you and nicked your wallet here, you knew they'd do 
it with taste and discretion. And leave you enough for your taxi 
fare home, natrellement. As the French say.
  You seat yourself on a stool and Alvin arrives bearing drinks.
  "Your very good health, my fine friend," you completely and 
utterly fail to say. Instead, you down the drink, belch loudly, 
and turn to stare pointedly in the other direction.
  "You know what..." ventures Alvin.
  You ignore him and contemplate murder.
  "I've heard there's a new quest going around. Loads of money. 
Goverment work. Narmean?" he continues unperterbed.
  Strangely, you have heard exactly the same thing. A whisper on 
the grapevine, adventurer's underground, that sort of thing. From 
what you can gather, the country's on it's knees, figuratively, 
like. No money, economy ruined from concentrating on enchanted 
swords rather than nickel plated grommits, that sort of thing. 
Basically, with inflation at 26 percent and unemployment in 
everyone but goblin eviction servers at an all time high, the 
place has gone to hell in an overly-laden shit cart. And not 
before time. You'd been predicting the downfall of the 
government and the takeover by the elves, dwarfs and pixies 
revolutionary communist party for years. You felt rather pleased 
to be right, even if the probable outcome is having your throat 
slit by a three foot high anarchist.
  "Anyway, right, the job right, you know, of returning the 
country to sanity and a decent economic footing, well, right, 
we've got it."
  You turn to stare at the idiot in amazement.
  "What did you say?" you splutter.
  "Well, I heard it would be well easy right," Alvin tells you, 
"so I went to see a mate, and he took me to meet the chancellor. 
Of the whole damned country! I explained our credentials and 
previous successes in questing. We got the job straight away! 
Loads of money in it for us. Easy as nothing. Just gotta collect 
a whole load of valuable loot, gold, silver, gems, the usual crap, 
and take it to the chancellor. Nothing to it."
  Could this be the big one? After all this time? The quest for 
the lost grapefruit of Scarborough was your biggest sucess to 
date (and it had gone off). This could put you on a sound financial 
basis for life!
  "How? When?" you manage to say.
  "Oh around now," says Alvin at his most casually vague, "Just 
like, collect up a few treasures and that, and wander east a bit 
to find the chancellor. Next weekend's free for me, what do you 
reckon?"

Now load the game and complete the quest, you lucky thing you.

How to Play

Simplicity itself. All done with the mouse, but for a few text 
inputs where the game will prompt you. The screen is divided into 
a few boxes: top left is a tiny number which is your score, top 
right another tiny number tells you how many goes you've had. A 
big box displays currant location pictures; this changes very 
infrequently and has to load new pictures from disk. Under this 
is all the text - descriptions, replies, inputs, everything. On 
the right, at the top are little pretty icons which allow you to 
move north, east, west etc. by clicking on them. Under this is a 
scrolling list of commands available, which can be scrolled up 
and down by clicking on the two icons next to them with up and 
down arrows on them.
  The mouse pointer can be two things: an open hand or a pointing
one. The POINTING hand means the game is eager and waiting for
your cunning fingers to enter a new command, ie click on a
direction icon or a command from the scrolling menu. The OPEN
hand means it is patiently waiting for you to press a mouse
button and scroll up more text for you to read.
  To do something clever and exciting, like for instance TAKE a 
BEER MUG: The text description will tell you that the beer mug is
present in the location you are in. Go now to the command list. If
the word TAKE cannot be seen, scroll upwards until it can (it is
at the top of the list). Click on the word and the display will
cleverly change to a graphical list of the objects in the location
you are in which can be TAKEN. Click on the beer mug icon. You 
will now have hopefully taken it.
  Other commands are very similar. Some things may evoke a rude
or sarcastic response from the game. ENTERING ALVIN is just one
of these. Some are just downright foolish, like EATING the BAR
TABLE. Just play around and experiment and you should get
the hang of things quite quickly.

  That really is about it. Try and be very inquisitive and
have a good EXAMINE at everything. You shouldn't die very
often and the game will usually have a good go at you if you
try to do anything really silly but the general rule is: if
something seems like a good idea, then go ahead and do it.
All you can get is dead. A cheat mode is available. An
exclamation mark will do the job most times. Hope you enjoy
it.