<!--
	Title: (Adventure) Lurking Horror
	Source: Zzap!64, #28
	Date: Aug 1987
	Transcription by Steve Derby
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*Infocom/Activision, £24.99 disk only*

This is the latest creation of Mr Dave Lebling, co-creator of the
original *Zork* trilogy and solely responsible thereafter for *Spellbreaker*, *Suspect*,
and *Starcross*.

Well, *Spellbreaker* wasn't too bad, *Suspect* was brilliant, and *Zork*
was... well, *Zork*! Despite the more recent appearance of the
other titles, it's good ol' *Zork* that really comes to mind when you get
down to playing *Lurking Horror*.

The game has been touted as a horror story -- it's certainly got
atmosphere oozing out of the circuit board and the Wiz actually
jumped out his skin when, listening intently to the 'chittering
of rats' in the nearby darkness, the telephone rang in real life and
almost induced a cardiac arrest.

Things start off easily enough. You have to finish your end-of-term
paper at college and find yourself in the computer room in
the company of 'a hacker', whose appalling body odour, abuse of
normal speech patterns, and undisciplined code have to be
EXAMINEd to be believed. After playing the college student role for
a bit, fiddling with microwaves in the canteen, exploring the nearby
buildings and labs, you soon find yourself drawn downwards -- literally.

Perhaps you've discovered the innocuous looking trap-door in
between two of the buildings, or the man-hole in the basement...
Perhaps you may have stumbled across the -- gulp -- sacrificial altar,
or even heard the.. are they really rats, or are they...
Aaaghghgh!

Of course, any sane student stays upstairs grappling the the
problems of logging onto his PC, but not you -- you've paid £24.99
for this software and blow me if you're not going down into the
darkness before you can say forklift truck.

All of this is carried out in Infocom's usual meticulous style --
and there's no doubt that Dave Lebling has a wonderful talent for
bringing both locations and those that inhabit them to life -- witness
his description of the Hacker: 'The hacker sits comfortably on an
office chair facing a terminal table, or perhaps it's just a pile of old listings
as tall as a terminal table. He is typing madly, using just two
fingers, but achieves speeds that typists using all ten fingers only
dream of. He is apparently debugging a large assembly language
program, as the screen of his terminal looks like a spray of completely
random characters. The hacker is dressed in blue jeans, an
old work shirt, and what might once have been running shoes.
Hanging from his belt is an enormous ring of keys. He is in need of a
bath.'

No doubt about it -- you've got to get those keys. To do that, however,
you'll have to find out what exactly turns the hacker on -- not
easy when his favourite rejoinder is 'Mumble. Frotz.' I can't help
feeling that maybe Dave Lebling had a younger Dave Lebling in
mind when he wrote this game -- or perhaps one of his colleagues
from MIT.

As it is, the world of end-of-term essays soon dies away when you
slip down through the trap-door into the damp, dank recess below
and find that: 'You can hear, in the distance, a chittering, scratching
sound...'

<table class="larger" style="font-weight: bold;"><tbody>
<tr><td>Atmosphere</td><td>94%</td></tr>
<tr><td>Interaction</td><td>93%</td></tr>
<tr><td>Lasting Interest</td><td>87%</td></tr>
<tr><td>Overall</td><td>90%</td></tr>
</tbody></table>