<!--
	Title: (SOFTWARE GALLERY) Moonmist
	Author: John V. Ryan
	Source: Run, v4(7)
	Date: July 1987
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

<div style="color: var(--dkgrey); font-weight: bold; padding: 0.25em; float: right; font-size: 2em;">B</div>

<blockquote style="margin: 1em inherit; font-size: 1.25em; font-style: italic;">Journey Abroad and Solve<br>
A Ghostly Mystery Without<br>
Leaving Your Computer</blockquote>

Ingredients: Two heaping tablespoons of adventure; add a pinch of
suspense. Toss in one specter and seven eccentric characters. Wrap in an attractive
package. Yield: Moonmist.

Moonmist is an interactive mystery/adventure that places you in the middle
of upper class British society. You're an eminent American detective, and
you've received a letter from an old friend, pleading for your help. So, it's
off to the Cornish moors with you.

Your friend, a spirited lass named Tamara, is engaged to marry the young
lord of Tresyllian Castle. But, alas, foul doings are in the works! An ancient
ghost has suddenly reappeared to haunt the old place and to kill Tamara. The
servants say the ghost looks amazingly like the lord's former fiancee, who died
under mysterious circumstances and whose body has never been found.

To further complicate matters, the previous lord of the castle died and
stowed away a treasure: a valuable artifact that must be found in order to
pay the former lord's debts.

Top this all off with a 12-hour time limit, a gloomy English castle and a cast
of crusty English bluebloods, and you've got a top-notch adventure that will keep
you at the keyboard for many hours.

Moonmist is lauded as introductory interactive fiction. This is evident not
only through the extensive documentation, but also during the course of
play. Moonmist's puzzles are relatively simple: Infocom's sophisticated multi-sentence
parser is extremely forgiving, and much of the tedious mapping usually
required with adventure games has been shelved in favor of a printed castle
layout. Battle-hardened hombres take note, however—this one can be solved
in as little as two to three hours.

Included with the software are playing instructions, several short stories
entitled "Legendary Ghosts of Cornwall," two background letters from Tamara,
a tourist brochure for Tresyllian Castle, and a Moonmist iron-on.

The storyling itself is not overly innovative. Furthermore, I found several
of the characters rather uninteresting, with cardboard personalities that left
me wondering why they had been included in the story at all.

Moonmist can also be exasperatingly slow to play. Disk drive access is
constant and can take up to 60 seconds after each command has been entered—something
to consider for owners with sensitive 1541 disk drives.

These quirks aside, Moonmist is an excellent entry-level adventure for
those new to the genre. With its sophisticated parser, user-friendliness,
four variations of replayability, and well-written prose, Moonmist has
proved that one hundred words are still worth one thousand pictures. *(Infocom,
Inc. 125 Cambridge Park Drive, Cambridge, MA 02140 C64/$34.95 disk.)*

<p class="bold right" style="font-variant: small-caps;">John V. Ryan<br>APO NY</p>